


The End of Danny

by imekitty



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, Horror, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-05-17 14:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 28
Words: 62,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14834001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imekitty/pseuds/imekitty
Summary: In prison, Maddie recounts the story of why she had to murder her son.





	1. ----------------------------

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration for this fic came from "The End of Alice" by A. M. Homes. The last chapter especially draws upon it.

I've been here some time now. Not yet a long time. My time here will eventually become long, but as of now, I've been here for less than he was here, and any time shorter than that is very short indeed.

Danny. Please take care with this name I give you. He was my ocean, my sapphire. Please, understand that. I hope you can see that there was no other choice, that he had to end.

It is early morning. I rarely sleep, and when I do, I only ever see him. Blissful at first, but then my lucid intellect always reminds me that he's an illusion here, and I cry and cry and hold him against me and hope that I never wake up, that I just stay in this dream with him forever. He is never angry with me here. He always wonders why I keep holding him so tight as if he is going to disappear.

The guards at last wake us and call us to attention. The names are called. Compliant responses, snarky responses, quiet responses. Some try to hold on to something from their past lives, their past personalities.

"Klara Baskova."

"Good morning to you," says Baskova from the cell next to me. She sounds groggy, but I know she sleeps soundly every night. She never had a son. She can't relate to me. No one here can relate to me. They are not like me. I am certainly not like them.

"Madeline Fenton."

"Yes," I answer. I want to forget myself, bury my identity under submission and monotony, but it is impossible when I am reminded of who I am at the beginning of each day.

...

A couple guards talk. One of the other guards will be leaving soon, pregnant with a boy. A boy, oh, boy.

"What will she name him?"

"I know what I want to name him," I told Jack, my husband.

"Anything you want," he whispered. "It's your turn."

"She still hasn't decided," says the guard. "Can you believe that?"

No, I cannot believe that. I knew from the beginning what I wanted to name him.

...

It was early morning another time. In the kitchen, I was too exhausted to do anything but sit. I hadn't slept at all. Neither had he.

I was still in my normal jumpsuit. I never changed out of it. I planned on just wearing it again that day. No shower. I sat at the table alone and waited.

Through bloodshot eyes, I watched him enter the kitchen. His thick hair was tousled. His shirt and jeans were wrinkled.

He stared at me for some time, perhaps afraid that I would yell at him again. He took a seat at the table with me. His eyes were misty.

"What now?" he asked softly with a quaver in his voice.

I didn't answer.

"Please don't be mad at me anymore," he begged. He put his head in his hands and started shaking.

Something stirred in me. I fell upon him, kissed him over and over.

...

I get letters. All kinds of letters. They are angry, inquisitive, demanding, philosophical, disgusted, delighted. A wide array of reactions to our story. I read them all, but I never answer them. Every once in awhile, I am tempted to reply, tempted to defend myself. Or him.

_How could you do such a thing? Why did you hate him so much?_

I loved him more than I've ever loved anyone, more than anyone could comprehend.

_I went to school with him. Do you remember me coming to your house once for homework help with your daughter? I swore that the next time I saw him I would kill him, but I never did see him again. Thanks for taking care of him for me. You really did the world a favor._

I know who this one is. I remember what he did to this one. This one deserved it.

But I cannot disagree. I did do the world a favor. My tears fall fast and heavy.

But the world doesn't know the whole story. I'm writing it only to you now. Will you read it to the end, or will you give up on it, too repulsed to continue?


	2. .

"Which one of you was snoring last night? Fenton?" My neighbor, Peterman, sounds cross. I can't see her face, but I'm sure it is twisted in an irritated snarl.

"You know it wasn't me," I answer calmly.

I've been studying everyone and everything here since my arrival. It's what I do. I must figure out how things work, how to make things work better. My mind analyzes everything. Subconsciously, unconsciously, always. There's no use in trying to change the way my scientific mind works now.

After careful research, I know how to speak to everyone, how to get favors, respect, how to keep them away from me.

"It was Baskova," says another neighbor, Chamberlain. "She's getting worse."

My neighbors start bickering. I don't pay attention. I need to concentrate, convert my thoughts and memories into words as eloquently as possible. The past tortures me, but I owe it to him to get the story right even if no one believes it. This torture must be my punishment. It won't exonerate me, but I must endure it for him.

But the days are long, so long. I embrace my pillow, try to remember what it felt like to hold him. He was once so small, always the smallest in his grade. He felt tiny in my arms. When he at last surpassed me in height and size, I was overjoyed. He made it to adulthood. I had raised him to be a man, my finest achievement. Broad shoulder mass, arms defined with muscle, a strong neck anchored so perfectly at the meeting of his collar bones. But he still retained some sweet features of his childhood, a boyish smile and the break of dark hair over his nape. Masculine, grown up, but still a hint of delicacy and innocence. So much more to hold on to. I wish I never let go.

...

His room was in disarray. Drawers pulled out, blankets and pillows on the floor, posters torn down. My doing. I was searching, determined to discover at last what he was hiding from me. Contraband, drugs, anything. I could handle and help him with whatever was going on in his life if I could just know what it was.

It was past three in the morning. Where was he? He was in high school, had a curfew, had to go to school in just a few hours.

When he returned, he flipped the light on and gasped when he saw me. He was horrified, but so was I.

...

"Fenton."

I look up and see two guards standing outside my cell. I am not sure if they actually want me to respond, so I wait.

"You have a visitor."

I look away blinking. I hope it's Jack this time. I comb my fingers through my greasy hair. If only I could make myself presentable. What if it really is Jack this time?

The guards take me in chains through halls and corridors. They are all familiar to me now. I have been taken this way many times. Every time, I hope it's Jack, pray it's Jack, beg for it to be Jack.

But it's never Jack. And it's not Jack this time either.

I'm put into a small space, a cage. Through the glass, I can see the same man I always see when I am here. His diamond hair looks silky. His suit is well-pressed.

"Maddie," he says with a cheerful lilt in his voice. "How are you, my dear?"

I stare back at Vlad Masters, my old college friend, a man I trusted far too much. He comes to see me almost every week. I should stop accepting these visits, but I am so hopeful that it will be Jack one of these times that I can't help it.

"I'm fine," I say. Vlad always asks how I am. I could tell him the truth, but what would be the point? A polite "fine" is all anyone wants to hear when that question is asked.

"Glad to hear it." Vlad smiles at me, that beguiling smile that could fool anyone. He is a snake charmer, a thief, a criminal. He should be locked away, too, but instead he sits across from me on the side of freedom.

Not that any human force in this world would be enough to restrain him.

"Maddie dear, remember…" Vlad's voice lowers. "You don't have to stay here. Say the word, and I'll whisk you away."

I know this. He wants to come in the night and rescue me from all of this, take me faraway and keep me all to himself in a different kind of prison.

I say nothing now.

"You know that I always love to just chat with you," says Vlad, "but I came this time because I actually have something to discuss with you."

I wait.

"I finally got around to selling that house," he says. He doesn't need to explain further; I know exactly what house he is talking about. "I put it off for so long, well, because it was far too painful to deal with." He pretends to be sorrowful. "But at last, I sent a team in to clean it out, and it appears you and Daniel left quite a bit behind."

That name. How dare he say it. I grit my teeth behind my closed lips.

"I cannot return any of the items to you, of course, so I am wondering what you would like me to do with them." He looks at me pleasantly, his leg bent and crossed over the other. "I could send them to Jack. I could sell them. I could burn them. I'll let you choose. Whatever you want, my dear."

He acts so nonchalant, so blasé. He acts as if he had no part in anything that has happened, in my being here.

He knows that I know the underhanded truth. I just realized it too late.

He leans forward. "Maddie? Do you have a preference for what to do with your things? With Daniel's things?"

"Danny," I say sharply. "His name is Danny."

"It was."

I curse at him, rage at him, scream at him, pull against my restraints to lunge at him. He calmly smiles back at me. He looks amused.

The guards pounce and drag me away. Vlad is still smiling at me as I am pulled out of his sight.

I will kill him. He is next.

...

Someone writes:  _I am thinking of naming my son Danny, too. It's cute, right? I'm sure you agree._

There is no sweeter name.

...

"Anything you want," Jack whispered. "It's your turn."

I was so excited. I let Jack name our first child, our daughter. He was hooked on the name Jasmine. Perfectly fine with me. I thought it was a beautiful name, and our Jazz turned out to be a beautiful girl.

But it was my turn now. We were having a boy. Rapture. I always wanted a boy. The day his sex was confirmed to us, I told Jack I already knew what I wanted to name him.

"Anything you want."

I lovingly ran my hands over my swelling belly. "Danny." The eighties were just about to end, and I was a girl who loved the sugary pop tunes and beats that were so prevalent at that time, that were only going to increase in popularity throughout the nineties. In particular, I adored Tiffany, a teenybopper princess of that time. More in particular, I adored her initial single, her little-known song,  _Danny._  From the moment I heard it, I was in love.

When you take your mark, Danny, with your aim, Danny, for my heart…

Danny, Danny, Danny. A precious name, so darling, so adorable. I wanted a Danny in my life so that I could say the name over and over and over everyday.

Jack scrunched up his nose. "Danny?"

"Mmm hmm." I rubbed my belly with a dreamy sigh.

"Are you sure?" asked Jack.

I looked up at him in confusion. How could anyone not like this name?

"Are you sure?" he asked again, slower this time.

"You really don't like it?" I asked with a small pout.

Jack sighed and gazed at the ceiling. He mumbled, "Daniel Fenton." He tried saying it again, louder, "Daniel Fenton."

"No, not Daniel," I said quickly. "Just Danny."

Danny, Danny, Danny. Only Danny. Not Daniel. I wanted only a Danny.

Jack looked at me in disbelief, shock. "You want his  _real_ name to be Danny?"

I nodded emphatically.

He was exasperated, dumbfounded. The very idea, the concept, completely nonsensical to him. We squabbled, debated, disputed. At last, a compromise. We could name him Danny if the name on his birth certificate and now on his grave could be Daniel.

I yielded, but even today, in my head, in my heart, he is only Danny.


	3. .:

I was considered a genius by many. I was even featured in a magazine all about women geniuses. I had so many aspirations and ideas. I was a scientist intrigued by the world's unknowns. I had accomplished so much, discovered so much, made many contributions to the science world. My daughter admired me.

I say all this in past tense because everyone, including my daughter, thinks I am nothing but a murderous child abuser now.

At least no one will ever think such things of Danny. He will forever be remembered as a sweetheart, an angel, a gentle soul who would never hurt anyone.

He'll never hurt anyone now, not from where he sleeps.

...

I know you have many questions. You know the grand finale of our story, but you want the middle, the beginning, the threads that weave the tapestry.

And, of course, I know you want the sordid details of the end. That is what you are really waiting for; no need to pretend otherwise. I promise I will be candid about everything, but you must go at my pace. You won't understand unless you follow my lead and don't go faster than the speed limit I establish.

He had to end. He had to be ended. I swear that this is the truth. Give me a chance to prove it.

Jack, Vlad, and I were obsessed with ghosts in college. We were fascinated, and as scientists, we were determined to solve their mysteries. No one else had really ventured into this field before. We were pioneers. The fact that we had little to go on was more than enough motivation for me. I had to know, had to figure, had to delve. I fully expected curiosity to kill me someday, and I couldn't think of a better way to go.

I could explain the tedious details of our research, of how we came to discover that there was a world beyond our own, a world inhabited by ghosts. A Ghost Zone. But that would take too long and, frankly, it does not have particular bearing on our story. Suffice it to say that we believed in the existence of a Ghost Zone, and we were determined to create a portal to get there.

Errors, miscalculations, blunders. We tried, we failed, we tried, we failed. One immense failure led to a falling out with Vlad. Our attempt at a ghost portal exploded on him, devastated and blistered him. His face was covered in oozing sores, pus-filled bumps and mounds, an affliction we referred to as "ecto-acne." He stopped attending classes after that, ceased all communication with Jack and me.

At the time, I had no idea just how significant this incident was. If only I had been more careful, had paid more attention, had somehow stopped it. Maybe Danny would still be here.

Years later, when our children were adolescents in high school, Jack and I decided to again tackle the construction of a ghost portal. We made careful calculations, used the finest materials, worked hard and took no shortcuts. We were so sure it would work this time. We did not care about money or fame. We just wanted this to work, to make a meaningful contribution to the field we had devoted so much of our lives to.

But after all of our meticulous work, the ghost portal turned out to be just another failure. We were discouraged, so much so that we actually discussed giving up on ghosts altogether. Neither of us had ever actually seen a ghost. The only proof we had were our spectral readings, results from spectral research. We began to wonder if we were just wasting our time.

Danny somehow figured out the portal. Not sure how he did it, but he managed to turn it on. Overjoyed, Jack and I celebrated. We began construction on another project, a vehicle that could safely travel through the Ghost Zone we were sure was just beyond the portal.

I wish that I had paid more attention to Danny after this incident. At the time, I had no idea that he had been inside the portal when he activated it. If only I had known sooner. If only Jack and I hadn't even tried to create a portal in our own basement.

If only, if only, if only.

...

I usually avoid looking in the mirror. I have to work up the nerve first if I want to. I have to prepare.

For some reason, I want to right now. Perhaps because I have been writing so much. I am thinking so much. Too much. I am remembering.

I gaze into it. I have not been young for years, but I am not yet old. My eyes are tired and lidded. My complexion is ghastly. My hair is stringy and limp and is now past my shoulders. I keep thinking about getting it cut, but I never do. I want to tell the haircutter to hack away, get close, show me the inner workings of my unsound brain. Understanding exactly how something works has always been a passion of mine, and dissection is a great way to understand a biological being.

What made me this way? What made him that way? Cut us open if you really want to know.

Throughout my youth, beginning in high school, I had the kind of eye-catching lines and details that drove men crazy. Ample, supple, curvaceous in all the perfect man-catching ways. I could play the part of whatever they wanted me to be, the virgin, the hussy, the maiden, the minx. I was mighty, domineering. My sex empowered me. I never felt the need to prove myself in spite of being a woman; rather, I proved myself because I was one.

When I look at myself now, though, that vitality has disappeared. I am no longer mighty but pitiable. This place will continue to wear me away, steal my remaining beauty and youth. I am not yet old, but I will grow old here. They will never let me leave.

I think of the men who have seen this body, felt this body, Jack and my old high school petting partners. But no man will ever see or feel it again.

But that's not why I usually avoid looking in the mirror. No. I avoid it because I am afraid to see him.

I gaze at myself and see some of his features in mine: the shape of his eyes, the bridge of his nose, the curve of his mouth, even his physique. All mine. All he really got from Jack was his coloring, but the fineness threaded into his masculine features was from me.

When I see me, I see him. I sob.

...

Someone asks in a letter:  _Did you always know that you would one day take him out just as you brought him in?_

Dear one, I saved him.

...

"I'm fine, really," he insisted. A desperate plea for me to reconsider.

"Do you know that for sure?" I asked him.

He said nothing. He knew he couldn't possibly change my mind.

...

I think I should tell you something now. I want you to be prepared. You might not understand now, but I want to set you up for this. It's an integral part of our story.

Danny wasn't human. At least, not entirely. I mean this literally, not figuratively. He was literally not entirely human. His morals, ethics, and sensibilities were certainly all human, but his physical being was infused with something else, something otherworldly, something that insisted on taking possession of his mind and his humanity from time to time and especially in the end.

For that matter, you should know that Vlad was and still is not human either. This I mean both literally and figuratively.

But Danny was not always that way. When he was born and for the first fourteen years of his life, he was completely normal, completely human.

When he was born, he was perfect.

I had forgotten how excruciating it was the first time, had been so euphoric afterwards that I managed to convince myself that it wasn't so bad, that I could surely do it again.

But then it happened again, and the memory came back, the memory of the pain and the agony and the screaming and the hateful thoughts and swears directed at Jack. I had thought I could do it on my own this time, but I was quickly gasping and begging for an epidural. The anesthesiologist acted swiftly, and by the time my boy was finally in my arms, I had once again forgotten about the pain. All I could think about was his spellbinding perfection.

Until this point, I had thought all newborns were unsightly, squashed and wrinkly and red all over. I even thought the same of Jazz for several days. But Danny was different. He was beautiful from the very beginning. Soft, exquisite, mine. My Danny.

I cried. I smiled. I kissed him. I whispered in his tiny ear, "I'll take care of you. I'll look after you. I'll protect you. You are safe with me."

Felicitous promises that had to be broken.


	4. .:·

"What are you most afraid of?" I asked him.

Lounging, my fingers laced in his hair. His whole body tensed.

...

A visitor. I accept because I hope it's Jack. It's never Jack, and it never will be Jack, but I always hope.

Vlad looks at me through the glass. He looks clean and neat and groomed as always. He must be paying someone off in order to see me. He should not be allowed to see me. Our visits so often end in me being dragged away. He knows exactly how to set me off.

"Maddie, my dear, my jewel, why won't you buy yourself a haircut? Or better hair products, at least?" he asks. "You have such beautiful hair. Do you need more money? Is that it?"

Vlad has been giving me money, enough that I could live far more comfortably than I do now. But I never use it.

Vlad leans forward, his arms crossed. "I sold it all, everything that was yours in that house. It's your money. I could give it all to you."

I still don't want it.

Is it obvious to you that Vlad is in love with me? He has been for many, many years, since we first met in college. This doesn't surprise me. Never surprised me. Back in my prime, I always had that effect on men. I hypnotized them, ensnared them. I didn't even have to try.

My family and others who knew me never understood why I was drawn to Jack. Why not someone worthy of me? Someone attractive, intelligent, and capable. Jack was overweight, absentminded, and oafish. But he made me feel like a queen. He was in love with my mind and my soul, not just my body. He was my Roger Rabbit, I his Jessica. He made me laugh.

Since becoming one of the wealthiest men in the world, Vlad could've had anyone he wanted. But he only ever wanted me. I guess I should be flattered. But his desire for me went beyond just a crush. Covetous addiction. Manic fixation. Insatiable thirst. Voracious lust.

He comes here to gloat, to admire his handiwork. I am trapped here, and he comes to ogle his prize.

"Let me take you, Maddie," he whispers. "Be with me. No one would ever find you, and you would be free. I'll keep you hidden, safe."

He has made this promise before. Not to me but to Danny. He toyed with Danny, trampled his confidence, made him believe he was weak and a blight on the world.

But even though I recognize Vlad's hand in all this, I ultimately can't blame him. It was my doing. He didn't make me do anything, only pushed me in that direction. He led me to the water, but he couldn't make me drink. I drank on my own.

"Be with me."

Was it his plan all along? Was it all an elaborate scheme to put me in a position where I either had to choose to be in prison alone or in prison with him?

...

Someone writes:  _My life is always so busy. So much to do. What's it like to have all of your choices made for you? What do you do everyday?_

What do you want to believe I do everyday? What kind of answer are you hoping to get from me? Obviously, I fantasize about who else I wish I could kill. I fondly reminisce about what I did to him. The memories are fodder for my orgasmic fantasies. Obviously.

...

The air here feels strange. It is sticky and stale, unfiltered as it cycles through the cells. There is a wet smell wafting, curling and rising from the mop water that is still evaporating. It is sickening, nauseating. I retch and heave and cough and sputter. My lips are cracked and bleeding as I lie on my cot, my hair drenched and sticking to my forehead. A yellow pool spreads out on the floor. The stench permeates everything, and I am leaning over again, spilling my stomach all over the floor.

Someone comes in with a mop, upset because she  _just_  finished mopping. I hear voices yelling, squabbling. I'm too queasy to pay attention.

Who are you and what do you do everyday? I think of your cozy townhomes, your neat gardens, your shiny cars, your HOA fees, your mortgages. Rush hour in the morning, rush hour in the evening, coming home to children who tackle you against the door, squealing their approval of your arrival, begging you to play and run with them. You have so much to do. Never enough time in the day. You think you are a prisoner of time. You long to shake off the constraints that keep you locked in the same routine.

Outside, out there, you are laughing, smiling, embracing, running, jumping, going. Going, going, going while I am staying, staying, staying. You are wondering what to make for dinner, if you should go to the store today or wait until tomorrow. You are checking the weather for the week, making plans for what to do this weekend.

There's no need to know the weather here. Here, it is always musty and muggy. It never changes.

...

Even though the ghost portal was activated, Jack and I started having doubts. We weren't actually sure what was on the other side, and our daughter, Jazz, a junior in high school at this point, was getting increasingly cross with us. What were we doing with our lives? Why were we devoting so much energy and time to something that we still had not yet seen?

Ghosts. We had never actually seen ghosts before. We studied them, obsessed over them, but we had not yet seen them. Jazz was convinced we were crazy, that we needed to drop it, that we were poisoning the family with our wild theories and ideas.

Indeed, we got to a point where we were about to give up. Perhaps Jazz was right.

But then we at last saw a ghost, a ghost that completely changed everything for us, for our whole family. A ghost boy with shimmering hair like moonlight. He appeared, and from that point on, our town of Amity Park was infested with ghosts.

But the ghost boy started it all.

...

Feverish. The sweat is on my neck and in my hair. I am taken in shackles to the infirmary. I stagger and try to keep everything inside of my stomach, but there are so many twists and turns that make me dizzy and even more nauseous.

Taken in. The doctor is beautiful. I scowl at her, hating her for being so beautiful when I am no longer. What is she doing here anyway? She could've been anywhere with looks like hers, and yet she is a prison doctor. I am sure there is some story about how she wants only to help, to give back, to make some sort of difference for the poor women here. Or perhaps she has done something horrible as well and is trying to make restitution. Whatever her reason, I don't care to ask.

My insides are lurching and churning. I state my complaint. The doctor looks me over, rolls me over, pets me and strokes me and pities me.

There is nothing wrong with me. I am told I ate something or that I am just imagining it. I am fine and should feel better soon.

She corrects herself. There is nothing physically wrong with me. Physically, I am fine.

It's in my head. The problem is in my head.

...

A day at home. Alone with Danny. Nearly four years old and such a treasure.

Wearing only an oversized shirt (one of mine), he jumped on our couch, cushion to cushion to cushion. A movie on the TV screen, his favorite movie set in space that he insisted on watching over and over and over again. Holding a model rocket, making swishing noises.

I tapped away on my laptop. Bills, e-mails, work, work, work.

The movie ended. He jumped off the couch and ran over to me. He called for me, requested my attention.

But I was busy. Work, work, work. I only nodded, did not say anything.

I felt something on my arm, something soft. He was gently kissing my arm. Small smacking noises.

How could I possibly ignore him now?

I grinned and cooed and set my laptop aside. I pulled him into my arms. My little astronaut.

...

The casket was kept closed during the funeral. He was beyond repair, a sight far too disturbing to be seen by anyone. Better to remember him in life. Better to just look at pictures and remember him that way. In death, he was contorted, broken, shattered, held together with countless stitches. Cremation had been considered, but it was ultimately decided to leave him be, to not destroy his body any further.

Tributes, poems, heartfelt eulogies. Someone sang a lullaby, a lullabye. Goodnight, my angel, time to close your eyes and save these questions for another day.

Vlad gave me these details.

Tears, sobs, wails. But no one cried harder than I did, faraway, locked away, jailed.


	5. .:·:

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Check again. Please."

Tiny pricks dotted him. Punctures. Injection sites.

"Yes, Danny. I'm sure." But I checked again to appease him. "Still sure."

He nodded in understanding, but he still looked so fearful.

...

The ghost boy along with a slew of other ghosts began to appear everywhere in Amity Park. They terrorized, haunted, and possessed. Manifestations of ectoplasmic energy and post-human consciousness. They each had their own quirks and obsessions.

But the ghost boy was different. Phantom was different. He was so much more than the other ghosts, so much more human and so much more alive. His obsession seemed to be saving our town, stopping the other ghosts. But even with this obsession, he could think and process beyond the capacity of other ghosts.

As far as I could tell, his obsession was being a hero. My obsession was him.

Phantom was the prize I lusted after, the entity I wanted on my operating table. I wanted to tear into him and understand his inner workings, discover what it was that made him so unique.

I was determined. I would capture him. I would abduct him. I would restrain him. I would use him. I would abuse him. I would keep him all to myself and never let him go. All for research. All for science. All for my pleasure.

You see where this is all headed, don't you?

...

Counseling. Vlad has paid for the best, and I am forced to go. They diagnose me, tell me I'm disordered, that I need to be mended. I am unwell. I am dangerous.

I am still feeling sick. My stomach is still twisting. But perhaps there is another reason for it, something beyond a physical ailment.

"Let's talk about your cognitive distortions," the licensed therapist suggests. She is well-trained. She has worked with all kinds of patients. I am just one case in a line-up of lunatics for her.

All-or-nothing: he is completely gone.

Personalizing: he was so sick, and it was all my fault.

Overgeneralizing: I did just one unspeakable thing and I am a terrible, awful, irredeemable person because of it.

Disqualifying the positive: many good memories, but that final one defines our entire relationship.

Mind-reading: everyone thinks I'm a monster.

Catastrophizing: he wasn't getting better, so he would never get better.

Emotional reasoning: I felt scared, cornered, so I had to.

Fortune-telling: if I didn't do something, it would only get worse.

Labeling: he was inhuman.

...

Outside. My little Danny was scared but excited. Jack held onto his shoulders as he pedaled his bike forward. Jazz circled round and round, speeding and standing on her pedals, her hair flying behind her. "It's easy, Danny! So easy!" she insisted.

I was holding the video camera capturing every moment. His determined expression, his short legs moving in circular motions.

A crash. My little Danny started crying. I rushed over.

"He's fine," said Jack. "Just a scrape."

Danny was whimpering. His knee was bleeding. Red blood. Normal blood. Human blood. He was completely normal, completely human at this time.

I tended to him, comforted him, bandaged him, kissed him. His tears disappeared as he smiled at me, a gap in his mouth from when he lost a tooth just the day before.

I was his protector. I was his healer.

...

"I am worried about our little badger," Vlad said to me. He spoke of him as if he was his son, our son.

"So am I," I moaned. "What can I do for him, Vlad? How can I help him?"

Vlad became very serious and patted my hand. "Whatever you do, you mustn't exhaust yourself. Ultimately, it's all up to him. You have little control."

I didn't like this answer. "I'm his mother. I can't just let him go on like this."

Vlad patted my hand again. "You're right. You can't."

I waited.

"You have little control, but the control you do have is powerful." His eyes were shining. "You can stop him if things go too far. You always have that."

I could stop him. I could end him.

...

I don't want to write anymore, not tonight. I want to empty myself again and collapse, pass out into a dreamless sleep until morning.

The ghost boy. Phantom. Cocky, mischievous, everywhere, nowhere. He seemed to be all over, and yet I could never find him. He was slippery, crafty. I had to have him. I had to make him mine.

I almost had him once. I had him on his knees and completely cornered. I had injected him with my latest creation, an aggressive drug that prevented his molecules from changing in any way, prevented him from turning invisible or intangible. I was high on his fear. I could sense it, could see it in the way he was shaking and in the way he tried to speak and reason with me. I had power over him. He was finally mine, all mine. I toyed with him, made him think that perhaps I would just kill him right then and there. But I never planned to let him go that easily. I was overconfident and was enjoying his agitation. I was sure that he was the cause of our town's ghost problems. If I could just eliminate him, everyone would be safe again.

But I had only managed to get Phantom in this position because I had been out looking for Danny. Past midnight, and he wasn't in his room for some reason. So unlike him to break curfew, and he wouldn't answer his phone. Worried, Jack and I went out to see if we could find him when we came across Phantom himself. I shot him with my special concoction and had him at my mercy. I asked him why our town was overrun with ghosts, asked him to explain why we never had ghost problems before until he appeared. He admitted that it was his fault that ghosts were targeting our town, that he had somehow managed to help Danny turn the portal on.

The moment I heard him mention my son, I could focus on nothing else. I was out there in the first place looking for Danny, after all, and hearing Phantom talking about him enraged me. What did he know about my son? Did he know where he was at that moment?

I admit that I overreacted, seized by my love and concern for Danny. I wanted to kill Phantom, suddenly convinced that he had done something with my son. My Danny would never just run off in the middle of the night. Surely, he had been the victim of something dastardly, and Phantom had to be either part of it or behind it.

I was going to shoot him. Phantom was beyond frightened, but I didn't care. If another ghost hadn't appeared at that moment engaged in a battle with my husband, I surely would've killed him and then taken his body to our basement lab. But as it happened, I had to help Jack, and by the time we took care of the threat, Phantom was gone.

When we at last returned home, Danny was waiting for us in the living room. I embraced him, scolded him, demanded where he had gone. But there was something odd about the way he responded to me, the way he pulled away with a gasp when I tried to touch him affectionately. It went beyond discomfort from merely being in trouble for breaking curfew. He seemed distressed, dare I say, traumatized.

Until this point, I had not been paying as much attention to Danny as I should have. While I was blinded by my manic obsession with Phantom, Danny was changing, losing his balance, failing. His teachers contacted me in concern. His English teacher seemed especially worried. But I didn't take the concerns too seriously, not until I started seeing the signs myself. Not until that night when he seemed to fear my touch.

I know it must seem obvious to you what was going on. But to me, at that time, what you've already concluded was simply impossible. It never once crossed my mind.

Fatigued dark circles became permanent under Danny's bright blue eyes, noticeable against his paling complexion that seemed to get whiter each week. He smiled less often, clipped replies much of the time. The ibuprofen and acetaminophen were all disappearing from our medicine cabinet at a rate that suggested he was often in pain. Secretive, often out very late, pushing curfew, though he never did break curfew again. At least, not that I was aware of.

Sophomore year of high school. I stopped him before he could ascend the stairs to his room. "Danny." Danny, Danny, Danny. I put my hands on his shoulders. He was my height and getting taller, more muscular. But despite his rapid growth over the past year, he looked weaker.

He gave me a tired smile. "Hey, Mom. What's up?"

I smoothed back his bangs and noticed that there was moisture in his hair. Sweat, and yet his skin was so cold. "You tell me. Come sit with me on the couch, won't you?"

I moved my hands from his shoulders down his gently swelling biceps and took his hands. I tried to lead him, take him. He was immovable. I was no longer stronger than him, and he easily resisted and stayed in place.

"I'm busy," he claimed.

The way he said it led me to believe it was true, but I wanted to know what it was he was so busy with. What was doing this to him?  _This_ , his ghastly coloring and drained countenance. What was he hiding?

"Danny." Danny, Danny, Danny. "Is there something you want to talk about?"

He shook his head. His smile was plastered, void.

Lying. Concealing. Something was not right.

He never used to lie to me, confided in me about anything and everything. He trusted me, and I trusted him. But now, there was distance between us, a distance that was the result of something more than just normal adolescent struggles.

I spoke to Jack about it.

"He's just fine," said Jack. He was looking through maps and schedules and itineraries. Distracted. He was about to leave on a trip with Jazz, a senior ready to attend an Ivy League university. They would tour and observe and acquaint themselves with her new home. I would stay behind with Danny. Danny, Danny, Danny.

I spoke to Jazz, our aspiring psychiatrist.

"He's just fine," said Jazz.

Surprised. At one point, Jazz was exhaustingly worried about Danny, but she seemed relaxed about him now.

But Danny wasn't just fine. I had to find out what he was hiding from me, from everyone. That was what I did. I researched, observed, inquired, hypothesized, predicted, experimented, tested, concluded. I approached everything using the scientific method, and my son was no exception. His puzzling behavior was my newest phenomenon to investigate.

Jack and Jazz left for the week, and it was just me and Danny. I was determined to bond with him, get him to open up to me, understand what he was dealing with, what he had gotten himself into.

"It's a nice day," I said to him after school. "Why don't we go outside and take a walk?" The sun was out, and he needed more Vitamin D, something to revitalize his complexion.

"I can't. Homework." He disappeared into his room.

I tried to interact with him, but I could never keep a hold on him.

"You have a doctor's appointment Thursday," I told him at dinner. I set this up for him. Perhaps a doctor could help me out, figure out what was making him look and act this way, prescribe a magical cure that would fix him and make him happy and healthy again. He was overdue for a physical anyway.

Danny lowered his fork.

"I'll be pulling you of school. Okay?"

He shook his head. "No. I don't want to see a doctor."

I smiled. "No one ever does."

He shook his head more fervently. "No. Really. I'm fine. I don't need to see a doctor."

"It's just a check-up, sweetie," I assured him. I rubbed his back. I could feel the tightness in his shoulder muscles.

He shrugged me off. In his eyes, I could see apprehension. "There's nothing wrong with me," he said firmly.

"Danny, we both know that isn't true," I finally said pointedly. "There  _is_  something wrong with you." Vexed, anxious. "Tell me the real reason you don't want to see a doctor."

"I just don't want to. I don't need to." He stared down at his plate, the dinner I had made for him, one rich in Vitamin D. But he didn't know that. He knew nothing about nutrition; that much was clear from his grades.

"Stop lying to me."

He looked up at me, fully attentive.

"Your teachers have sent me multiple e-mails. You're often late to class, always tired, never participate in classroom activities or discussions." I pause. "You don't look well, Danny. Why do you look like this?"

"Like what?" he asked irritably.

I held a hand out to him. "This!" He knew what I was talking about. His faded color, his hunched shoulders, his haunted eyes, droopy and sad.

"I'm fine," he said quietly, ominously.

"No, Danny, you're not."

"Well, if you're so smart, then why don't  _you_  tell me what's wrong with me?" A challenge. His voice rose.

"I'm not a mind reader, Danny."

"Then just trust me when I say I'm fine."

"But you're not."

Silence. Heavy.

"Danny, please." I tried to calm my tone. "I know it's tough at your age. I know you want your privacy. But I was your age once, too, and I can help you if you'll just let me."

More silence. He looked skeptical.

"If I guess correctly, will you tell me?" I asked. I had ideas, theories about what he was hiding.

"You couldn't possibly guess."

A confirmation. He  _was_ hiding something. "Let me try."

"No. Don't bother. You could never, ever guess."

"And why's that?" I asked. His tone was almost haughty, and I didn't like it. "Because you're special? Because what you're going through is unique to just you? No one else could ever possibly understand you? Typical teenage angst, is that it?"

Something flashed in his eyes, irritation, hurt.

"Oh, woe is you. Poor Danny. All alone, no one for him to turn to. He must suffer alone because he is different from everyone else, has such terrible troubles, such a terrible, terrible life." I was mocking him, taunting him. I couldn't help it.

We locked gazes, engaged in a staring contest. But I was the parent. I had to win.

He broke away and stormed off. But I wasn't finished with him. I followed him, shouted after him. He ignored me. I grabbed him. He easily pulled away. In his room, his door shut and locked. I banged and yelled. He was silent.

I seethed, then cried. My Danny was so close yet so faraway, lost someplace I had never been.


	6. .:·:.

A letter:  _I went to the store today. Realized I forgot something. Went right back to get it. Annoying._

You make me feel so nostalgic.

...

Prison. My stomach has settled. I am no longer in pain. Physical pain, that is.

Baskova is always lonely. She always wants to talk to me, non-stop chatter. I let her talk, but I rarely respond.

"All dried up. Sitting on the cold floor too long. Too late now."

I am paraphrasing. I don't actually understand her half the time. Her accent is thick, her phrasing unusual.

"Am I oppressed? Am I sad? What am I feeling?"

Baskova likes talking to me. Probably because I'm the only one who actually lets her talk to me.

"If I don't know it, is it still true?"

Continuous. Dragging.

If I could cut her open, I'm sure I would see capillaries filled with depressed rejection and shriveled muscles fixed to brittle bones with sinews of frustrated isolation.

"The world is so big, unknown. All I know is me."

This is what I hear: "I don't matter. I never married. I have no children. I've never had anyone. When I die, it will be as if I never existed at all  _except_  for the one man I did kill. That is my legacy."

I think of my own legacy. No one will ever know what I did for this world.

...

"I know you want to." His heated accusation. "Admit it. You want to see exactly what I am."

I shook my head. I would never admit it.

...

I could have barged into Danny's room. I could've easily unlocked it from the outside. I was the parent. It was my right, responsibility even.

But I was too upset. This wasn't how I wanted to deal with this situation. My Danny was clearly struggling with something, and I couldn't get him to open up to me about it unless he felt respected and loved.

I left him alone. I left to calm myself. In our basement, I threw myself into my current research, distracted myself with countless hypotheses to test. At times, irritation and anger would seize me, remind me, but I pushed them away, pushed them until they interfered less and less frequently, until I was no longer cross but instead sad and worried.

It was late, too late to have a real talk with him. But I didn't want him to retire for the night without knowing how sorry I was for cornering him, for hurting him. I wanted him to know that I loved him, would always love him, would always be there to help him. I just wanted him to be happy again.

At his door. No light around the edges. It was nearly midnight. Perhaps he was already asleep. I knocked. No answer. I tried to turn the doorknob. Still locked.

I frowned and debated what to do. I decided that I couldn't leave things as they were. I had to say something to him, even if it was just "good night, my angel."

I knocked again, more forcefully. Silence.

There was something odd about the silence, though. It wasn't the silence of sleep or a grudge. It was the silence of emptiness, nothing.

My frown deepened. Had he gone out? I didn't remember hearing him leave, but perhaps I was too absorbed in my work in the basement. Regardless, whether he was mad at me or not, Danny knew full well that he had a curfew, especially on school nights.

I could feel myself getting irritated again. I grabbed a key to unlock the door and stood there for awhile. I hoped that I was wrong, that he was indeed in there, that my Danny was not a secretive teenager, was not openly defying me and breaking curfew.

I opened the door. I was afraid to turn on the light, afraid to know the truth.

Light on. Danny gone.

I felt snapped, panicked, outraged. Where was he? Who was he with? What was he doing?

It was all enough. I had respected his privacy for too long, and as his parent, it was my obligation to finally figure out what he was hiding from me. I was a good mother. I didn't deserve this, and I was going to end it.

I was the ender. His ender.

Everything. Searched, snooped, opened, overturned. On the bed, in the bed, under it. In the drawers, under them. Shelves. Pockets. Behind posters and pictures. Computer files. Internet history. Signs. Letters. E-mails. Codes. Drugs. Contraband. Weapons. Any of it. All of it. I didn't care what I found as long as I did find it.

But there was nothing. No illegal substances. No gang-related paraphernalia. Nothing dangerous. Nothing unusual for a teenage boy.

Except for the passwords on some of his computer files. But I could not access them.

Not yet.

I was the parent, and I would force him to unlock them as soon as he got home. Because I loved him.

The minutes stretched into hours. Danny was still gone, and he was not answering his phone. I was getting angrier. Past three. I was getting frightened. Had he run off forever? Was he in trouble?

I tried to shake away the fears. I sat in the dark in his room, determined to be there the moment he walked in.

But he never did walk in.

He flew in.

...

He flew through the air. I held onto his arms and swung him around in a circle. He giggled and shrieked, his little legs kicking.

I set him down, panting.

"Again!" he cried.

I shook my head and collapsed onto the grass. "You're getting so big, Danny. So heavy."

He fell beside me and nestled in the crook of my arm. "Sorry," he said.

I laughed and tickled him. "No, it's a good thing, sweetie." I ran my fingers through his soft hair. "You're growing up."

"How big will I get?"

I pulled him closer. "Big enough to carry  _me_ , to make me fly."

...

My eyes widened. My heart nearly stopped. He came in through the closed window, phased right through it. A boy with white hair, a boy who glowed. The ghost boy. Phantom.

All at once, I realized who he was. It was so obvious. Why hadn't I made the connection before?

I was in the dark, in the shadows. He couldn't see me at all. But his natural light was enough for him to see the state of the room, the disorder, the invasion and violation. I watched him look around in confusion and alarm.

He changed, but I had already put the pieces together. Phantom transformed into my son. Danny, Danny, Danny Phantom.

He turned on his light to see the room better. He saw me. Panic. Distress.

I don't remember pausing or waiting. I remember my reaction being immediate. I yelled, cried, demanded. All along, Danny? The ghost boy was you, Danny? Danny, Danny, Danny? Danny, you were the object of my obsession, Danny?

He yelled back, defended himself, squared off against me. It was an accident. He didn't mean for it to happen. It was just that Sam—

Sam? She knew?

And Tucker. And Jazz. And Vlad.

Vlad!

Vlad was the same, also half-ghost.

I forced him to unlock the files on his computer. He grudgingly obliged, crossed his arms while I looked through everything. Logs, images, descriptions all related to his ghostly vigilante activities.

Sam pushed him to investigate the portal. The resulting zap permanently scarred his DNA, transformed him into something not of this world. He was terrified at first, not sure what do, not sure if he should tell us.

"We're your parents, Danny. Of course you should've told us. We could've helped you."

"I wanted to. But…" He looked down at the floor, turned away, clenched his fists.

He opted to make use of his powers, to make something of his new ghostly state. Activating the portal had given ghosts an easy way to get into our town, and he took it upon himself to fight them, capture them and send them back to the Ghost Zone, protect the town.

He tried to make himself sound noble, self-sacrificing, heroic. But I was still angry. Angry because he kept it from me. Angry because he had been putting himself in danger, danger that could've killed him. Angry that Sam and Tucker and Jazz and Vlad all knew but that I was kept in the dark.

I felt betrayed. And I couldn't stop yelling at him. Couldn't stop berating him. Couldn't stop guilting him.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I demanded.

"Why do you think?" His voice cracked.

"I don't know what to think."

"You wanted to rip me apart. You thought of me as just a research specimen."

"I wouldn't have if I had known it was you."

A long pause. "I was afraid to find out for sure."

He sounded pained, but this only fueled my feelings of betrayal. Didn't he know I was his mother? Hadn't I always been sympathetic toward him? Had I ever tried to hurt him before? Did he really think that I would've hurt him if I had known? Just how little did he think of me? After everything I had done for him? And how did he think I would've felt if he had been killed or if I had unknowingly shot him myself not knowing who he really was?

"I almost shot you." That moment when I had Phantom on his knees. My son, my Danny. "Do you realize that I almost killed you, Danny? Do you remember that?"

"Yes, I remember. Of course I remember. I could never forget that." His voice sounded tortured by the memory.

"And you still thought that it was better to keep it from me?"

"It certainly gave me no reason to tell you."

But that was all the reason. Why didn't he see that? Why did he think it was better to hide from me?

I was putting all the blame on him. No, no, none of it was my fault. If he had just told me, had just been honest with me, then I wouldn't have almost hurt him. I would've helped him.

I continued with my tirade. I was angry and frustrated but also humiliated and ashamed of what I had put him through, what I had fantasized about doing to him. Danny eventually stopped interjecting and fell quiet, despondently resigned. He sat on his bed, his head down, his gaze downcast, his bangs obscuring his eyes. I paced the room as I ranted and vented, too enraged to stay still.

I paused to breathe, exhausted from yelling, my voice hoarse and my throat raw. I finally took notice of his sad surrender. Still emotionally charged, I stared down at him. He slowly raised his head and met my gaze. I remember his eyes so vividly, clouded with regret and shame and pain. No fight, no malice.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

I could feel heaviness in my eyes trickling out. I left the room, left him alone, left to process this by myself.

So much hurt. We were both so hurt.


	7. .:·:.:

Prison. A visitor. Jack?

No. Never Jack. Jack has written me off. Last I heard, he moved to be close to Jazz and her family. I know that he has been working on our divorce, but it's been a difficult process under these circumstances. I don't blame him for wanting nothing more to do with me. I haven't even tried to fight it.

But I wish I wish I wish that he would come see me just one last time.

Vlad is looking at me. Smiling. He always seems so genuinely happy to see me. Possessively happy.

I don't want to see him anymore.

"Vlad," I say. "Stop coming to see me."

He blinks. "I thought you liked my visits."

"No."

"Then why do you keep accepting them?"

"I keep hoping that you'll be someone else."

"Don't they tell you it's me?"

I shrug.

Vlad clasps his hands. "Why do you want me to stop coming? Don't you get lonely here?"

I look down at the floor. "Vlad, you know that I don't blame you."

He waits.

"I know that I have only myself to blame for what I did to him." I look up at him. "But I still hate you for what  _you_  did to him."

He leans back. "What  _I_ did to him? All I ever did was talk to him."

I glare. I could retort, list all of the poisonous thoughts he planted in my son's head. But he already knows what he did.

"I never even touched him," Vlad continues.

I know what he wants to say next, but he only smiles.

A tightness, a stab, a lurch inside me. My stomach is twisting again.

"Maddie, please, accept my offer." Vlad's eyes are soft now. "Let me take you away from here. Stay with me."

I almost want to accept. I can't kill him if I'm stuck in here, after all.

...

I left him alone. In my own room, I collapsed on my bed and let go of everything, soaking my pillow with my anguish.

I wonder now what he was doing at the same time. But I never asked, so I'll never know.

I couldn't sleep. Tossed, turned, couldn't get comfortable, couldn't relax. When the sky started to lighten, I sat up in bed. Exhausted. Drained. Empty. I no longer felt anything. Everything in me had been absorbed and swallowed by my pillow and my sheets.

I was still in my normal teal jumpsuit. I didn't bother changing. Didn't shower. Didn't brush my hair. Didn't wash my face. Didn't care. In a fog, I somehow made it downstairs to the kitchen. I sat at the table there for a long time. Or perhaps it was only a short time. I don't remember. All I remember is that I felt as if I had been sucked dry. So dry. Nothing but pain in my head and a void in my chest.

Danny appeared and stood outside the kitchen for a moment, as if reading me to see if I was okay with him being there. I saw him, but he was blurry, my eyes not fully focused. Too tired to focus them. Still dressed in his street clothes, he looked as worn out and disheveled as I did, probably more so because he already looked so weary even before all this.

He walked into the kitchen, then stopped again. He studied me, as if testing the waters. Was I okay with him being this close? Could he come closer? Would I yell at him again?

I only looked back at him with unfocused eyes.

At last, he took a seat at the table. His black hair was a striking contrast against the blanched color of his face. He was monochrome except for his bright blue eyes, eyes that were bleary and forlorn.

"What now?" His quiet voice trembled.

I heard him, understood him, but I had no answer for him. I truly didn't know what would happen next, what could happen next, what I even wanted to happen next. This moment felt surreal, as if there could be no resolution for it.

Danny's expression changed slightly. Contrition, desperation. "Please don't be mad at me anymore," he begged. He cradled his head, his fingers tangled in his tousled hair. He was shaking but otherwise made no sound.

My emptiness started to fill at the sight. I could see just how much pain he was in, and I knew that I had caused it. I had been feeling hurt myself, but I was the parent, the parent who was supposed to be wiser, more mature, more sympathetic. He was just a boy, a child who was afraid of how I would react if I knew his secret. He knew that capturing Phantom had been a fanatical aim of mine. He had heard me and his father discuss exactly what we wanted to do with Phantom once we did catch him, all of the graphic details.

I was the parent, and I needed to be more compassionate. I had almost hurt him, killed him, and yet I was taking no responsibility for that. As I watched him shudder in pain, my heart ached, broke. With a cry, I embraced him, wrapped my arms around him tightly. I kissed his hair, his forehead. It was my turn to beg, and I begged his forgiveness, assured him that it was okay, all okay, that everything would be okay now.

We stayed like that for some time, my arms locked around him, his head on my shoulder. He was my boy, my ocean, my sapphire. My Danny, Danny, Danny.

I broke away at last and studied his ashen complexion, his exhausted expression. I cupped his face in my hand and ran a thumb over his cheek. I told him that I loved him, that I was sorry I yelled at him, that I was just overwhelmed and scared and that I couldn't contain my emotions in that moment.

He smiled. A weak smile.

I realized just how sore and dehydrated I was from tensing my muscles and crying for so long. I downed a glass of water, then started going through the pantry for what to make for breakfast.

Danny began to leave the room. I called him back.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

He rubbed his head sleepily. "I'm kind of supposed to be at school in less than an hour."

I put my hands on his shoulders and directed him back to the table. "Sweetie, you're not going to school today."

"I'm not?" He seemed thoroughly befuddled, as if this was an unthinkable idea.

"Of course not. You're staying here with me today." I pulled out a skillet, a carton of eggs, spinach, ham. "I'm going to make us omelets, we'll shower, and then we're going to spend the day together."

Danny was quiet for a moment. "What exactly are we going to do?"

"We're going to talk," I said. "No yelling. Just talking. You and me." I cracked the eggs, watched them bubble and cook.

Everything was going to be okay. Danny and I were going to be close again. No more secrets. I would see to that.

...

Prison. Stabbing, nauseating. I feel it in my gut. I am not a doctor, didn't study medicine to a great extent. I was more concerned with the non-living, the spectral entities in our world.

I massage my ailing stomach hoping to extinguish the fire inside. It feels warm, swollen even. So real, too real to be imagined.

Baskova walks by my cell, her hair wet from a shower. I have a strange urge to call her in, to have her place her soaked head against my belly to cool it down. Instead, I opt to shower myself. Perhaps a cleansing rinse will relax my cramped insides.

The water runs over me, jets and spurts of hot water. With my eyes closed, I turn my face right into the blast.

The heat, the water pressure, the steam…

With a twist and a reel, my stomach rejects this attempt at placation. I am forced to bend over, to aspirate and splutter. Bile spills out like a fountain. I can feel its acidic consistency in my throat. I fall to my knees and gasp, gulp in air. The yellow expulsion rushes to the drain and disappears. I turn my head back to the water with an open mouth and drink it in, rinsing all of the sick out.

...

Danny coughed, retched, vomited. Nine years old and sick with the stomach flu. He lay on the couch so that he could watch TV. His legs were pulled up against him. I could see the pain in his face. The glass of water on the coffee table was still full.

"Sweetie, please drink this," I tell him. "You need to drink it all."

He shook his head with a soft moan. "I don't want to sit up. Hurts too much."

I stroked his feverish head. He moaned at my touch and clutched his middle. So ill, but I knew he'd get better. He'd be okay and happy and healthy again.

I was always there to nurse him back to health. No matter what ailed him, it was my obligation as his mother to take care of him.

And when recovery and remission were clearly impossible, that's when he needed me most.

...

This pain is buried deep inside of me. I cannot quell it.

I'll try to sleep it off. Surely, it will be gone by morning. I just need to allow my unconscious mind to take over and conceal the pain until it disappears.

Perhaps this is my end. Perhaps I am dying. If I die tonight, I will tell myself:  _This ending is too good for you._

But if I live? If I live, I don't know what I'll do.


	8. .:·:.:·

From a biological and evolutionary standpoint, our individual existences only matter if our children have children. It is not enough to simply have children of our own; our children must procreate themselves. Then, and only then, do we really have meaningful impact on the living and changing world.

Jazz validates my existence in that sense. She has four children now. They are beautiful just like her. I officially matter. I officially contributed to the progress and improvement of our species.

But children are not to be taken lightly. Having children is perhaps the most important decision that can be made. There is no turning back, no quitting. Children will take everything from you for years and years, rarely giving back throughout the duration you rear them. It consigns you to years and years of never-ending fatigue and perpetually empty bank accounts. Raising children is, arguably, the hardest job there is.

But the hope is that you love them, that you find great joy in serving them, that you grow to love them the more you serve them. The work that is forced on you just for having them is hopefully rewarded with treasured memories and deep affection.

My children rewarded me in spades.

I feel so guilty, so ashamed, but I wonder what I would do if I could stop myself from getting pregnant a second time, knowing that the resulting child would not only live a short life but would have a disturbed and brutal ending, and without any children of his own, would never have biological significance.

I honestly don't know. Danny was the greatest blessing I could have asked for and I certainly would be devastated to not have had him, but would it be inhumane to bring him into existence with the knowledge of his tragic fate?

Now, you might be thinking that because his ending was my doing that I should be able to prevent it if I could go back with this knowledge. It is not quite that simple, however. There is a ghost I will introduce to you later, a ghost named Clockwork, a ghost who knows more than anyone that fate cannot so easily be changed no matter how much we want it to be, no matter how hard we try.

Danny himself tried to change his fate. He failed.

...

Throughout breakfast, I kept the conversation away from Danny's ghostly double life. I was itching to ask him about it, to really get under the surface of what had been revealed just hours before, but we both needed to recover, recharge. Danny was especially harried, but he relaxed as we chatted about mundane topics. A bit of color returned to his face. I could still sense some uneasiness, though, as if he was concerned about what was going to happen next. During lulls in our conversation, he wouldn't look at me. I could sense that he wanted to say something more meaningful to fill the silence, but he stayed quiet until I brought up a new topic to reengage him.

After we finished eating, we ignored the dishes and went upstairs to shower and change. I called Danny's school to let them know that he would not be attending that day due to a family emergency. Not a lie.

About an hour later, Danny and I reunited in the hall outside our rooms. His hair had regained its normal luster. His eyes were now clear, almost sparkling. He was still so pale, but I now knew that it was due to his moonlighting activities as Phantom which prevented him from going out during the day and getting much needed sunlight. I could fix that. More Vitamin D, more afternoon walks.

But despite his pale complexion, he still had an elegance interlaced with his masculine physique. Broadening shoulders and growing chest tapering to a narrow waist. A delicately angled jaw leading to a thickening neck that smoothly completed the curve of his tautening back. A youthful, well-built look. My little boy was quickly becoming a strapping man.

Danny noticed me staring at him. He chewed the inside of his cheek in discomfort.

I put my hands on the side of his face. "You've become so handsome, Danny. You know that?"

Blood rushed to his white face. He laughed with flattered embarrassment. "That's nice. My mom thinks I'm cute."

I put an arm around him and started leading him downstairs. "I'm sure you're a big hit with all the girls at school."

"Not at all."

"I don't believe that. Not with the way you look! You're a regular heart throb."

Danny only rolled his eyes, but he was grinning.

"You haven't been on any dates in awhile."

Danny shrugged. "That's because…" He didn't finish his sentence.

I sensed that he wasn't quite ready to talk to me about his romances, his love life. It seemed like he wanted to, but we hadn't talked like this in so long, so openly, so candidly. We were both out of practice.

"It's Sam, isn't it?" I asked with a knowing smile.

"No!" said Danny quickly. He turned red again.

I laughed. "You've had a crush on her forever. No need to hide it."

Danny shook his head, stumbled over his words.

I hadn't seen much of Sam in awhile, but I knew that Danny often hung out with her, often texted me to let me know he was with her and his other friend, Tucker. I thought about the dark-haired beauty with the morbid perspective on life. I had always liked her spirit, her fire, her desire to change the world and make it better.

We were now in the basement. I gazed at our closed ghost portal, imagined Sam encouraging Danny to check it out, convincing him to go inside and investigate it, an investigation that permanently changed him. A sharp feeling. I swallowed it down.

"What are we doing here?" Danny asked. No more banter. He seemed uneasy again.

I smiled and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Danny, sweetheart, I want to run some tests on you."

He stepped back.

"It's okay, Danny. I'm not going to hurt you." I looked through cabinets, drawers, pulled out what I needed. "I'm just concerned."

"Concerned about what?"

"I want to make sure that you're really okay." Vials. Electrodes. Syringes. Needles. "I want to make sure that whatever is inside you, whatever has changed your DNA, isn't dangerous." Ghostly toxins. Poisonous infections. Slow-growing abnormalities. I had to make sure his ghost half wasn't actually killing him.

"I'm fine, really." He sounded frightened.

"Do you know that for sure?"

No reply.

I began with the basics. Temperature. Heart rate. Blood pressure. Oxygen saturation levels. Cardiac output. Carbon dioxide concentration. I was not a medical doctor, but I still had a fundamental understanding of how the human body worked and what characteristics a healthy one should have. His results were fascinating, unusual, sometimes expected and other times far off from what I anticipated. I hypothesized, gathered, recorded, jotted, remeasured. Amazing. It was no wonder he didn't want to see a doctor; a doctor would've been confused by his vitals.

Danny was quietly compliant, staying still, transforming into his ghostly alter-ego and back into his normal state at my behest. He didn't fight, didn't argue, rarely spoke. I placed electrodes on him, looked at his brain activity, his basal metabolic rate, body fat and water percentages. Incredible. I looked at blood samples from both of his forms. Trace amounts of ghostly antigens and spectral antibodies when in his human form. Ectoplasm coursing through his veins when in his ghost form. Impossible. And yet it was right there in front of me.

I became less aware of Danny and more engrossed in my findings. I was frenzied and feverish, obsessed with discovering more. Captivated, taken, unaware of anything but what I was testing. I had concluded that he was healthy and fine, that this was not killing him but was actually making him stronger, but I couldn't stop myself from continuing, conducting tests and experiments that went beyond confirming his health and safety. X-rays, tourniquets, injections, venipunctures. Frenetic exhilaration. Dizzied passion.

I felt something on my hand, a drop of moisture. I studied it for a moment and recognized it as a tear.

"Danny, are you okay?" I asked in alarm.

He shut his eyes tightly, then opened them again, tried to blink away his tears. "Can we stop now? Please?"

He didn't look at me, kept his gaze ahead and to the floor.

I moved away from him, pulled the needle I had stuck in him out of his arm. Without another word, he stood and climbed the stairs out of the basement.

My neurons were disabled for some time. Too shocked and numb to move or speak. I tried to process what just happened, what I had done. What I had done to him.

I ascended the stairs myself and found Danny on the couch in the living room. His elbows were propped on his thighs, his upper body bent over. I sighed with relief, glad that he had not run away. I sighed with grief, sad that he had run away from  _me_.

I stood beside him. He did not look up.

"Danny? Can I sit with you?"

He made no movement. I sat beside him and put a hand on his back.

"I'm sorry, Danny. I didn't mean to go that far."

Still no movement from him. I stayed quiet, rubbed his back. At last, he sat up, but he did not look at me.

"That wasn't the first time I've been in that position," he said quietly. "I know that you're a scientist and that you just want to learn more about what I am, but…" He breathed deeply with a small shudder. "I have nightmares about that sort of thing."

I thought back to the journal and log entries I had read from his computer. Encounters with both ghosts and men who wanted him for their own sadistic purposes.

Including Vlad. But I'll get to that later.

I hated to think about what my Danny had been through.

We started talking after that. Really talking. He was open with me, answered all of my questions.

All except one.

"What are you most afraid of?"

With my arm around him, a hand on his head and in his hair, I could feel him tense and shiver.

"I'm not ready to tell you that yet."

I should've been more concerned. But I let it go because I didn't want to push him anymore than I already had.

We eventually dozed off together on the couch, exhausted from overwhelming emotions coupled with lack of sleep.

Safe. Comfortable. Everything was going to be okay now that we had begun to rebuild trust between us.

...

Pain is still writhing in my gut, gurgling deep. So acute that it is hard to focus on anything else.

If only I could cut it out. Cut into it, inspect it, understand its physical properties, see exactly what it is.

As with him. If I could just inspect him surgically, dissect him—no, vivisect him. He must be alive. And no anesthetic. I want to see how he responds, if his spectral nerves operate as well as his human ones. Could his pain possibly be as acute as mine is now?

Don't tell him. He can't know what I really want to do to him.

If I could just manipulate my brain, trick my senses into thinking this pain is actually pleasure. If only he could have done that.


	9. .:·:.:·:

_I think, perhaps, you could help me with my dissertation. Could you answer some questions for me?_

Essentially, you want to ask what's wrong with me, right? I don't actually know, but I think, perhaps, I've always been too preoccupied with the pursuit of truth. Always so much proof but never any truth in this world.

...

Prison. Morning. I realize now what I wrote last night in delirium induced by the horrible pain I was in. I could rip it up, destroy it, continue to keep it locked away.

But I feel you already know, that you've already guessed. I might as well confess. I have to be honest if I really want you to believe me.

My obsession with Phantom didn't end when I discovered he was my son. It actuality, it grew and festered in the corners of my mind. Knowing that Phantom was only half-ghost made him all the more enticing to me. Knowing that he slept just down the hall every night made him all the more tempting to me.

I resisted. There was so much I wanted to try on him, so much I wanted to do to him. But I didn't handle him in that way again, not until he begged me to years later, and even then, I never went beyond what was necessary for what he wanted out of it.

Danny always knew. We both knew. But for years, we never spoke of it. We both knew that it was better to just ignore it, pretend it wasn't so. A silent understanding between mother and son.

I resisted until the end.

But after the end, I could resist no longer.

...

The next day, Danny was at school, and I was alone, alone to figure out where I would go from there now that I knew his secret. We had come to some understandings, had made some promises to each other, but there was still so much uncertainty, so much I was concerned about.

I decided to start with one of my biggest concerns: Vlad Masters. From Danny's log entries and from his own mouth, I now knew what had happened to our college friend and lab partner after he had been blasted from a failed ghost portal attempt. He himself had also become half ghost, but unlike my sweet Danny, he had chosen to use his powers for more sinister and selfish purposes. All of his success was owed to abuse of his powers as he overshadowed others into giving him everything he wanted.

At this time, he was the mayor of Amity Park. As I discovered, he had used his powers to gain this position as well, had managed to convince everyone that he was the only one who could protect us from ghosts by staging his own ghost attacks.

But that's not what was on my mind when I decided to go and see him. What angered me even more than all of his underhanded schemes was his relationship with my son.

I stormed into his office. As usual, he was delighted to see me.

"Maddie!" He stood from behind his desk, a wide grin stretching from ear to ear. "How good to see you, my dear! You're looking lovely as ever. Please, have a seat. Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea?"

I crossed my arms and stared him down. He seemed to sense immediately that I had not come for an idle visit. His smile vanished.

"I know that you're half ghost," I said simply.

He didn't reply.

"I know what you've done with your ghost powers." I paused. "But that's not why I'm here."

Vlad waited for me to continue.

"I'm here because I want to know why you didn't tell me my son is also half ghost."

Vlad slowly lowered himself back into his chair. I remained standing.

"He didn't want anyone to know," Vlad said at last. "I was honoring his wishes."

I moved forward and slammed my hands on his desk. "He's a boy! A child!  _My_  child! How dare you keep something like that from me."

"It's not like I'm the only one who knew," said Vlad unflinchingly.

I exhaled through my nose in vexation. "I will speak to Jazz," I said in a low tone, "but she's just a child herself. You, on the other hand, are a grown man, a grown man who is supposed to be my friend." I straightened up and crossed my arms again. "Although I can see now that you are the furthest thing from a friend I've got."

Vlad's expression changed significantly. He actually looked hurt. "Maddie, that's—I never—I—"

I put up a hand to stop him. "I came here to tell you that I know what you've done to him. I know all about how you've toyed with him, used him, abducted him, experimented on him, almost killed him."

Vlad kept eye contact with me, but he said nothing.

"I came here to tell you to leave him alone. I don't ever want you to come near him or have any contact with him at all again." I leaned across his desk, my hands planted firmly on its surface. I stared straight into his eyes. "If you ever hurt my son again, I will kill you, Vlad Masters."

When I look back on this now, I have to wonder what Vlad was really thinking. He was a powerful man with extraordinary otherworldly powers. I could never actually stand a chance against him. I wonder just how seriously he took my threat.

But as it happened, he only nodded, that same sad look still in his eyes.

When I left, I fully expected to never speak to Vlad again, to completely sever all ties with him. I wish I had upheld that expectation, that promise to myself.

But even if I had, I can't be certain that Danny's fate would've changed.

...

Prison. A visitor.

"Who is it?" I ask.

"Just come and see if you want to know," one of the guards says. They begin to shackle me.

I shake my head. I know it's not Jack. "Not this time. Tell him no."

The guards pull me, force me to go. "We can't say no to someone with that much money."

Vlad looks at me through the glass with his normal charismatic smile. I look back at him with my normal disdain.

"I hear you've been ill lately." He sounds genuinely concerned. He leans forward, his hand clasped between his knees.

My arms are crossed. I look at him through narrowed eyes.

"You need better care," says Vlad. "Let me take care of you, Maddie." He lowers his voice. "Just accept my offer."

I am so tired of this. "Why do you keep asking me, Vlad?" My tone is even but tetchy. "It's not like you need my permission. You could just take me."

I ask this even though I already know the answer. As with Danny, it all comes down to his ghostly obsession.

Vlad blinks in mild surprise. "I would never want to take you against your will, my dear." A small smile. "It's always been my dream for you to actually  _want_  to be with me."

"I don't. And I never will."

Vlad's smile is gone. If he has to force me to be with him, than I won't be the perfect wife and woman and lover he wants. It can only be me. Only I can satisfy his obsession.

"You'll have to take me if you want me." I am purposefully challenging him knowing full well that it will frustrate him.

Vlad shakes his head, shuts his eyes, clenches his fists. "Like I said, I would never do that to you."

"You had no problem taking Danny against his will."

Vlad says nothing, but I can see him drawing in a sharp breath, a glint of something in his eyes.

"You had no problem kidnapping him for your sick experiments." My glare becomes hateful.

"You're right. I did some terrible things to him." Vlad meets my glare. "But I find it quite ironic that you bring it up when  _you're_  the one who killed him."

I am dragged away cursing and clawing. Vlad is not looking at me this time. He briskly stands and leaves.


	10. .:·:.:·:.

In my dreams, when I somehow manage to stay asleep for a significant amount of time, usually in the very early hours before the sun rises, he is there. He is almost always a young teenager, the way he was before so much changed between us, the way he was before he became inhuman. I am not sure why he appears to me in this form.

He is always happy, always smiling. He has no idea what his future holds, no idea what will happen to him, no idea what I will do to him. I always realize too quickly that he's not real. My mind reminds me with a painful jolt that he is gone. I hold onto him and clutch him close to me, breathe him in. He feels so real in these dreams, but then I wake to find that he has vanished, that I had made him vanish.

He was my most horrific magic act.

...

Now that I was in on Danny's secret, our relationship improved dramatically. He seemed to be lighter, as if a weight that had been pressing on him was lifted. He didn't have to hide anymore.

I didn't tell Jack. I never told him. To this day, he still has no idea that our son is half ghost—

was was was was was was was was was was waswaswaswaswaswaswaswaswaswaswaswas

I certainly tried to tell him a couple times, had every intention of eventually telling him, but the timing was never right. Jack was even more impulsive than I was, certainly not as reasonable. I know, you must think I'm a hypocrite for getting so upset with Vlad for not telling me when I couldn't even tell my own husband. But Jack just didn't seem mature enough to handle such a revelation. The right opportunity never presented itself, and it was so much easier to just keep it from him.

I regret it now. I should've told him. Maybe Jack could've helped me, could've stopped me.

_—could've ended me first—?_

Danny and I started talking more often. After school, late at night, at a coffee shop, in his room. He was somewhat hesitant at first, but he seemed relieved once he started to trust me, once he saw that I was not angry and not judging him. He told me about his relationships with certain ghosts, which ghostly enemies didn't concern him and which ones truly frightened him, his ventures into the Ghost Zone, his mishaps with some of our ghost-related inventions, his personal theories about ghostly essence, what ghosts really were and what he thought he really was now.

"What do you think you are, Danny?"

"An oddity."

This was a late night in his room. I sat on his bed, he in his desk chair.

"An oddity how?" I asked. "I mean, besides that you're only half ghost."

"Being half-ghost means that I have a life beyond any ghostly obsessions. I still have humanity and can resist what other ghosts cannot. Full ghosts, real ghosts, it's as if they can't help themselves, like they are  _compelled_  to do anything and everything to obtain or feed their obsessions." He smiled. "Almost like OCD or something."

I knew all this already as a long-time ghost researcher, but he had been encountering them on a far more personal level than I ever had. "So you don't have a ghostly obsession of your own?" I was teasing him, but his smile disappeared.

"I used to think I didn't," he said quietly. "But…" He looked away.

I leaned in closer. "Danny?"

He looked back at me. I could tell he wanted to tell me something, but he seemed unsure.

"Danny, you can tell me. It's okay."

He averted his gaze again. "I haven't told anyone this. Not Tucker or Jazz or even Sam."

He paused, a long moment of weighty silence. I waited, watched his face as he tried to find the words.

"When I transform," he began, looking down at his hand as if he could see its spectral properties, "I feel…different." He continued to study his hand, turned it and looked at the back of it, perhaps because he didn't want to look at me. "I… _think_  differently." A pause. "It wasn't noticeable at first. I thought I was the same when I transformed." He finally looked at me. "But I'm not actually the same. When I'm Phantom, I'm more ghost than human both physically and mentally."

"What makes you say that?" To say I was curious would be an understatement. This was the sort of information on which my scientific mind thrived.

"When I'm human, I can stop myself from doing things. I can reason, I can calculate, I can talk myself out of something. But when I'm Phantom, I can't always stop myself from doing certain things." He drew in a shaky breath. "I sometimes feel… _compelled_  to do certain things."

Oh, how he had me hooked.

"Like I said, it wasn't noticeable to me at first. I would do things but never really thought about  _why_  I was doing them. I thought that I felt a responsibility to protect the town, to protect others. I thought that was why I kept becoming ghost, that that was why I kept fighting even when it hurt so much, even when it nearly killed me."

I had no hypothesis for where this was all headed. I simply waited for him to continue.

"But I've done things that I wouldn't normally do." He was once again not looking at me. "Things that made sense to me when transformed, but when I reflected on them later as just myself, they didn't seem right. They weren't things I actually wanted to do, weren't things that were characteristic of the real me, the human me."

"Things like what?"

"Like…taking things too far with ghosts, using excessive force with them that I couldn't justify later when I wrote about it in my journal." He motioned to his computer. "And not just ghosts, but people, too. There have been times when I stopped people from doing certain things. Sometimes they were horrific crimes that I stopped, but other times, they were just petty offenses." His tone lowered. "Or just people in my life who have wronged me, my bullies…"

This alarmed me. "I thought we took care of your bullies?"

Danny looked at me guiltily. "I just told you that they stopped so that you wouldn't worry anymore."

I could feel an angry feeling stirring inside me, but I quelled it for his sake. "Oh, Danny."

He put up a hand to stop me from saying anything more. "I've hurt them, too. As Phantom. I'm not sure why I did, why I felt like I had to. It wasn't as if it came out of nowhere, though. I mean, it was always in response to something they did while I was transformed, either threatening or insulting or beating on someone. I didn't even really hurt them that much, honestly. Just blasts of ectoplasm." He paused. "But I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to do more than that."

Where was he going with this? "Danny, what exactly do you think your ghostly obsession is? Do you think it's protecting others? Stopping injustice?"

"I thought it was that at first," said Danny, "but there have been times when I took off before saving someone. I mean, remember that time when you—" He stopped, his words suddenly stuck in his throat.

But I knew what he was talking about. "When I had you at gunpoint and almost shot you."

He nodded, but he seemed ashamed for even daring to bring it up. "Another ghost was attacking Dad which made you finally let go of me. Remember? He was in trouble." He grimaced. "I was too afraid, too traumatized to stay any longer. I flew away without helping him at all. If it was my ghostly obsession to protect others, I wouldn't have been able to do that. I would've been compelled to stay and help him."

I was very confused now. "I don't understand, then. What do you think is your obsession?"

"I'm not actually sure, but I think it might have something to do with…pain." He shook his head. "I mean, like…I don't know how to explain it, but I think it might be to eliminate pain and suffering. I don't ever want to feel it. Sometimes physical but mostly emotional. Guilt, shame, agony, I want to get rid of them all."

"You want to relieve people's suffering." I offer this simplification.

"No," he said, almost darkly. "Just my own."

"But then why do you always try to protect others?"

"Because I would feel guilty if I didn't. It's my fault these ghosts are here in the first place. I'm the only one who can protect the people of this town. But that said, I have abandoned that mission on occasion for my own sake. If I feel that my own personal pain is only increased by fighting off a ghost or protecting someone, then I won't do it." He looked at me anxiously. "Does that make sense at all to you?"

"I'm not sure," I told him honestly.

He gripped his elbows, bit his lip. "I'm worried because I feel like it's getting worse. I make new enemies all the time, see horrible things all the time, and when I'm transformed, I just want to make it all stop, all of the negative feelings I have."

"Only when you're transformed?"

He shut his eyes. "I can sometimes feel it when I'm human, but I am able to resist it in this form." He opened his eyes again, looked down at his hand. "I can't seem to resist it when I'm transformed. But I worry that since it is becoming more prevalent when I'm human that it will worsen, will consume me no matter what form I'm in."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because it's happened to me before."

Stunned, confused. I only stared at him, not sure what I was supposed to make of this response.

...

I am reeling and heaving and spilling everywhere. My body is rejecting everything. It wants me to suffer.

Or perhaps it is my own conscience that wants me to suffer. The doctor insists that I am fine. The problem is in my head.

The therapist thinks so, too. "Let's talk about some people in your life. Can we talk about your daughter?"

Jasmine. Jazz. Lustrous hair framing defined cheekbones tapering to a delicate chin. Beautiful and petite but so much passion within.

"And your husband?"

Jack. Strong and powerful build even if it has been buried by increasing excess layers of fat. Sharp jaw, eyes always gleaming with childlike curiosity and elation.

She doesn't ask about the final member of my family, the one who no longer exists.

"And Vlad Masters?" Her tone is professional. "He's been visiting you a lot. Tell me about him."

I am cold. I am hard. I am nauseous.

...

"It's happened to me before."

What did he mean? Something about the way he said this made me shiver.

He looked at me solemnly. "Do you still want to know what I am most afraid of?"

I had asked him for this information just a couple weeks earlier, but he had declined to answer. He was now offering it almost eagerly, as if it was a burden that had become too much for him to keep to himself, as if telling someone else would finally relieve some of the pressure it had been imposing on him. If he could just tell someone else, then perhaps it would not frighten him as much anymore, only half as much.

I nodded. Of course I wanted to know what my son was most afraid of.

"I've seen my future. I've seen what I become." His voice was low, so low that I had to lean forward to hear him. He told me a story, a narrative that was so nightmarish for him that he could not even find the strength to type it up in a journal entry. He spun a tale of a horrible monster who destroyed the world, killed thousands, and never felt any remorse or any negative feelings at all.

A monster born out of a strong desire to make all of his pain go away. His obsession.

...

First grade. I was called to Danny's school to pick him up.

"He was pointing this at other boys," the principal explained as she held up some folded paper that resembled a gun.

I was outraged. "You're suspending him for this? Really?"

The principal only inclined her head apologetically, but her face showed no sympathy. "Zero-tolerance policy. I'm sorry."

I was livid. Danny sat in the backseat as I drove. I gripped the steering wheel tightly. My teeth were clenched.

When we got home, I slammed my car door shut and threw his open to help him out. He looked at me with the saddest blue eyes.

"Are you mad at me?" he asked.

I was too taken aback to answer him.

"I don't like when you're mad." He sniffled. "Please don't be mad at me anymore."

("Please don't be mad at me anymore," he begged years later.)

My heart broken, I embraced him, my anger quickly replaced by compassion. "No, sweetheart, no, I'm not mad at you."

"I didn't mean to get in trouble." Danny's eyes were filled with so much genuine sadness and regret.

"I know you didn't, Danny. Don't worry about it. I'll figure it out so you can go back to school, okay?" I led him inside to the kitchen.

"I feel really bad." He sat at the table, barely tall enough to rest his chin on it. "Am I a bad person?"

I could see just how much this was hurting him. My anger rekindled somewhat. How could anyone dare to make my sweet son feel this way?

I set a tall glass of chocolate milk on the table for him and rubbed his back. I tried to assuage his concerns, assured him that he was very good, all good and not bad at all.

But despite my efforts, even at that young age, he seemed unconvinced.


	11. .:·:.:·:.:

Fifteen years and seven months and two weeks and four days. At last, Danny had passed the written driving test after failing twice and had his permit. Perhaps he had failed on purpose considering how apprehensive he seemed to be about learning to drive. Any other teen would've been thrilled that his mother was ready to start teaching him right away, but anxiety was not unusual for Danny, especially in recent months.

At this time, I still had no idea that he was half-ghost. I had no idea that there was noteworthy reason for his heightened anxiety.

After arguing with Jack about who should take him driving for the first time and arguing with Jazz about using her car, I dragged Danny outside with me. Finally in the car ready to go, my anxiety was also quite high, but I tried to keep it together for Danny. He was already quite sensitive, and I did not want to add to it by letting him know just how nervous I was for him.

An easy drive. That's all I had planned for us. He would just drive through our neighborhood and in an empty parking lot, and then we would return home.

But Danny was so tense and on edge that it seemed he could do nothing right, not even the simplest tasks like starting the car, making a slow turn, braking at a stop sign, or driving on the right side of the road. Yes, everything that he could possibly do wrong, he did.

But I was partly at fault, perhaps even more so than I thought now that I reflect on it. I lectured him for every mistake, yelled at him for his poor knowledge of driving, brought up his shortcomings in an attempt to—I don't even remember why. I was frustrated and angry, and I felt the need to vent it. I insulted his poor study habits after failing the written test twice. I told him his hair was so stupidly long that he couldn't see well enough to drive. I actually called him names, names that a mother should never call her son.

He had had enough of my criticism. He stomped on the accelerator, forced the car to travel at a frightening speed, determined to give me a legitimate reason to be angry with him. He certainly succeeded. I was livid and enraged and scared and—

I smacked him. Hit him right in the face.

And that was the end of his first driving lesson.

When we were finally home again, I was immediately repentant, especially when I saw the mark I had left on his face. But he had no more fight left in him. He had convinced himself that he deserved it.

Our driving lessons were far milder after that. He would usually stay quiet and obediently follow my instructions. He didn't want to make me angry again, didn't want me to inflict any more pain on him. He didn't want to feel that bad ever again. He had to keep the pain away, had to keep me happy so that I wouldn't hurt him again.

I apologized so many times, but although he appeared to forgive me, he still seemed afraid of me whenever we were in the car together. I was scared and only hit him out of desperation, but it haunts me still that I could do such a thing to him.

Years later, I hurt him even more. Permanently.

...

The story of Danny's greatest fear did not settle well with me. There was so much about it I didn't quite understand, so much that I felt I needed to know. It sounded so fantastic, so inconceivable. How could my angel of a son possibly turn into something so terrifying?

He was definitely frightened by this future he had seen and fought. The way his pale skin turned even whiter and his breathing became labored and shaky made that very evident. But it appeared that he had successfully evaded this future, so why was he still so afraid?

"He still exists," Danny told me. "Supposedly outside of time, as Clockwork told me, but that makes no sense to me. How can he still exist if I don't somehow turn into him?"

Clockwork, outside of time…?

"That whole time as I fought with him, my ultimate enemy, I felt as if I was trying to evade God." Quiet, so quiet, as if afraid that God would hear him and find him at last. "And now, as I feel my ghostly obsession getting stronger, I wonder how long I can keep evading Him."

I wanted to help him. I could not bear to see my Danny this distraught and troubled.

I had to know more. I had to go to the source.

I studied the map that Danny and his friends had created of the Ghost Zone, but it was very intricate and covered in notes and written caveats.  _Wait until…only when…do not come from this direction…do NOT enter unless…avoid at all costs…_

It became clear to me that I couldn't do this on my own. But who to get to help me? I knew Danny would never want to take me on such a journey, and I felt it was better he didn't know of this secret mission anyway. Jazz apparently had no idea how to maneuver the Ghost Zone despite her knowledge of Danny's powers. Sam or Tucker would no doubt tell Danny. And Jack was not ready to know any of this yet.

That left just one person.

Vlad was so happy to see me. His eyes were lit with so much joy and hope. In his stolen office, he rushed up to me.

My gaze was cold and hard. I kept my arms folded against me and leaned back just enough to indicate I did not want him to come closer. "I need your help."

His smile vanished, but his eagerness remained.

"I need you to take me to Clockwork."

He was certainly not expecting this request. He didn't say anything for a long time. But then we were together in the Specter Speeder, far too close for my comfort, but I endured it for the sake of my son.

To my surprise, Vlad seemed completely unaware of the story Danny had told me about his supposed future.

"But how can that be?" I asked him. "Danny told me that you're the reason it all happened."

Vlad scoffed. "That boy would blame me for the holocaust if he could."

"Vlad," I said darkly. "Don't talk about my son like that." I kept my eyes ahead. "And from what I've heard from him, I wouldn't be surprised if that were somehow true."

"Maddie, that isn't fair." His tone was now very serious but aggrieved. "You haven't heard my side."

"What could your side possibly be, Vlad?" I shot him a glare before looking ahead again. "Are you going to tell me you didn't kidnap him? Didn't abuse him? Didn't come close to killing him?"

A long pause. "No, I can't deny any of that."

I did not look at him, but this confirmation boiled my blood.

"But I just wanted…" He trailed off and didn't continue. I could sense that he was gazing at me with longing, but I ignored him.

We at last reached Clockwork's realm. The Ghost Zone itself had been an enigmatic labyrinth of strange lights and eerie harmonics, but this was a fortress of massive winding gears and ticking metal, the inner workings of a grandfather clock, a forest of steel and brass.

Clockwork himself was peculiar, a blue-skinned red-eyed ghost whose form was variable, constantly changing from young to old to young again to even younger.

Despite our surroundings, Vlad remained in his human form, perhaps too afraid of what I might think if I saw him transformed. I approached Clockwork fearlessly, but he already knew why I was there.

"You've come to ask about your son's fate."

I was caught off-guard for only a moment. If he really was the master of time as Danny had told me, then his omniscience was not surprising.

He showed me the contraption that held Danny's dark form, one of the Fenton Thermoses that Jack and I had created.

"He's really in there?"

"Yes."

"He's still in there?"

"Yes."

I stared at it for some time.

"You are wondering what it means that he still exists."

I looked at Clockwork. "Can you tell me?"

"It means exactly what your son fears most."

"But how? If he stopped the incident that led to the existence of this dark Danny, then how could he possibly still be here?"

"He only eliminated one of the paths. There are other ways for Danny to come to this end." Clockwork's tone was even and composed. "Fate is very jealous. She will claim her prey at any cost."

I did not like hearing Clockwork talking about my son in this way, as if he were a victim being stalked by something unseen, unstoppable, and unforgiving.

Via a ghostly looking-glass, he showed me the particular path that Danny had erased. I watched it all, curiosity changing and branching into outrage and anguish and horror.

Danny was afraid of disappointing us, of disappointing me. Jazz's extraordinary score on the Career Aptitude Test was looming over him as he prepared to take it himself. Worry and doubt, negative feelings he  _had_  to make go away. He stole the answers from his teacher, Mr. Lancer, convinced that cheating was the only way he could satisfy his ghostly obsession, an obsession he still had no idea he had. Mr. Lancer suspected Danny of cheating and called us, his parents, to a meeting at a popular fast food restaurant in town, the Nasty Burger. We were there, Jazz was there, even Sam and Tucker were there.

An explosion. Some volatile sauce had become too hot and created a rupture and release of temperature and gases. The building was destroyed, and everything in it was destroyed, and every _one_  in it was destroyed.

Danny had lost his entire family and his only friends, and he was convinced it was all his fault. His desire to make us proud ended up killing us.

With no one else to turn to, Danny moved in with Vlad. But he was consumed by grief, consumed by sorrow, consumed by far too many painful feelings, feelings that were rooted deep in his humanity.

Obsessed. He had to make this hurt go away.

He had to eradicate it at its source.

He pleaded with Vlad to remove his human existence from his ghostly one. Only a human could feel this much pain, and if he could just be fully ghost, the memories would no longer hurt him.

I glanced at Vlad, observed his reaction as he watched an alternate version of himself rip Danny's ghost half away from his human half with gauntlets of his own creation. Danny, no longer restrained by the conscience of his human side, ripped Vlad apart and fused with his villainous ghost side, becoming the enemy that terrified Danny so.

Beside me, Vlad's eyes were large and round. Astonished horror. He seemed to notice me looking at him and met my gaze. I narrowed my eyes at him, pursed my lips.

But my Danny, the Danny who had told me this story, found a way to enter this future. But there was so much pain for him here, too. His enemies from the future, broken and shattered by his dark self, found him and took their revenge, punished him for what he had not yet done.

"Please. I didn't do all this to you." My Danny was trapped and could only beg. "It wasn't me."

"You're responsible for the horrible things that happened to your world and ours. To everyone you've ever come in contact with. Your family, your friends, and us." His enemies were insistent and convinced of this. They readied themselves, prepared to give him a final blow.

"Get away. Get away," Danny screamed.

Was this command directed to his ghostly enemies? Or to his painful feelings?

" _Get away!_ "

This last scream was accompanied by an ear-splitting wail, the eeriest dissonance I had ever heard laced with desperation and haunted by despair.

"Can you see just how powerful his ghostly obsession is?" Clockwork asked us. "Powerful enough to grant him the most devastating of abilities, powerful enough to blacken his soul entirely."

We continued watching. Danny at last confronted this dark version of himself. He sealed this dark Danny away, sealed him within the confines of the Fenton Thermos just mere meters away.

"Danny successfully deleted this pathway," said Clockwork when the images ceased, "but there are other pathways that could lead to his dark future."

I was silent as I absorbed this revelation. Tears were pricking at my eyes, but I held them back. "Can you show me the other possible pathways?"

Clockwork shook his head. "I could not possibly show them all to you. They are countless."

Deep, deep, struck so deep. "And as long as this enemy exists in the Thermos, Danny will undoubtedly become it?"

"Yes."

"But are there pathways that bypass this fate?"

"Yes."

Clipped answers spoken with such apathy.

"But it appears that Danny is still on a pathway leading to this dark fate," I said. "Is that it?"

"It is," answered Clockwork. "I will tell you that the chance of him escaping his fate is very low. The paths leading to it far outnumber the paths that don't."

I looked at Vlad, a shadowy thought of my own running through my mind.

"I know what you're thinking," said Clockwork. Images again flickered to life in his looking-glass, varying images of a darkened Danny, some with red eyes and blue-tinged skin, others with his normal complexion and green eyes. "Even if you were to eliminate Vlad and stop the fusion of his ghost half with Danny's, I assure you that this could still happen." Still so even and undisturbed. "And as things are progressing, it very likely will."

No, no. I had wanted to believe that this wasn't true, that Danny had remembered it wrong or that he had simply dreamed it all up. I looked down and let my tears fall. Vlad placed a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged him off.

"Why didn't you kill him? Why don't you kill him now?" I asked the ghost sharply. "You were asked to prevent this. If you're so convinced that this—" I gestured to the images. "—is still going to happen, then why are you still allowing him to live?"

Clockwork's expression did not change as he stared at me, bored into me with his empty eyes. "I am holding out for that one pathway that will completely abolish the possibility of his ultimate enemy coming into existence, the one pathway that will grant him the longest life possible."

A long silence. That final clause was ominous and terrifying.

"Show me," I demanded with a fractured voice.

Another silence. Clockwork's eyes never left me.

"No."


	12. .:·:.:·:.:·

_I've started so many letters to you but threw them all away. I had no words for a long time. For a long time, I could not believe it. Even as I watched him being lowered into the ground, I could not believe it. I had not seen his body, after all. I had purposefully avoided photos from the scene and his autopsy, even avoided the days in court when I knew they'd be showing such photos. I have no idea what exactly you did to him, but Tucker and Jazz strongly urged me to not look at the photos, both of them expressing regret that they had. To this day, my lasting image of him is whole._

_I wish I could've been there for him. I wish I hadn't lost contact with him so that I could've protected him from you. I had always known that you had a sick fixation with him. I saw the jealous way you would look at me when he and I were together at your house. And how you kept insisting on him going back to visit you while we were in college was really quite insufferable. But I'll bet he never told you, did he? How so many of our fights were about him not being able to say 'no' to you?_

_He was afraid of you. Did you know that? Before you found him out, he was afraid of what you'd do to him if you caught him. And after you found him out, his fear only seemed to increase. He spoke highly of you, but he could never convince himself that you weren't waiting for an opportunity to strike. He didn't want to make you angry, kept appeasing your many seemingly insatiable requests for him to return home so as not to upset you. I kept trying to tell him he was being paranoid. I should've taken his concern seriously._

_Where am I going with this? I don't even know. I just need to say something to you. I can't stay silent. I want you to know what I think of you._

This letter from Sam goes on and on. I know that she is married, but she signed it with the surname "Manson." Whether she decided to keep her last name or she just wanted to be sure I knew it was her, I do not know. The letter came to me a while ago; I don't remember when exactly. I am not surprised she wrote me, though. Always the outspoken one. Always one to voice her opinions and challenge whatever she deemed to be injustice. Accusations and outrage and questions. Why, why, why had I done this? How, how, how could I?

I didn't reply to her. What would I say if I did?

Dear Sam, do you have any idea what  _you_  did to him? That the beginning of his end started with you breaking his heart?

And don't think I've forgotten that you're the one who pushed him to investigate our portal. I will never forgive you for that.

...

I kept the trip I took with Vlad to see Clockwork secret from Danny for years. I didn't want to bring it up to him, not when his mood had lifted so considerably. Not only did he no longer have to hide from me, but he had been feeling so good that he finally asked Sam out on a date. As expected, the two of them hit it off very well. They had had feelings for each other for some time, so their relationship progressed quickly and happily.

Sam was suddenly at our house far more often. Seeing her lounging with Danny on our sofa or sitting on his lap as they surfed the Internet together became a normal image. Sam's parents did not think much of Danny, so the two love-struck teens apparently felt more comfortable at our house.

I smiled. I was cheerful. I told her she was welcome anytime and that I was so happy that Danny had finally gotten out of his own way and asked her out because he had been crushing on her for so long.

But between you and me?

Seeing her on top of Danny, possessing his face and neck and seeing him seize her in kind was never a pleasant sight for me. I now knew that she was the one who encouraged Danny to enter our ghost portal and give himself a life-changing shock. Did she have any idea how irresponsible that was, how dangerous? It seemed she didn't even care, that she was so taken with his ghostly uniqueness that she never stopped to think about the ramifications of it, had no idea of the resultant darkness he had to battle and try to outrun everyday, the waiting arms of fate that were reaching for him as he unknowingly ran toward them.

Simply put, for one, my perception of Sam had changed.

And for two—

Dare I admit this to you?

Yes, I must. I promised I would be candid.

She was stealing Danny away from me. We had started repairing our relationship, but he was already becoming distant again. Not in the way he was before when he didn't trust me, but in the way that meant he had found someone to make up the entirety of his world.

Dreaming, sighing, humming. I could always tell when he was thinking about her. He would constantly look at his cell phone, hoping for a call or text from her. He was in love, madly and deeply.

Jack couldn't be happier. Sam was pretty and intelligent and resourceful. His perception of her hadn't changed at all.

Honestly, I was also happy for Danny. I do not want you to think that I was plagued by jealousy. He seemed over the moon and finally out of the fog that had surrounded him for so long. His grades were improving, his smiles were far more frequent. He was definitely in a better place than before and appeared much healthier.

I think my greatest concern was that I now knew the fierce veracity of Danny's ghostly obsession with stopping his emotional pain.

—or that's what I've told myself—

Love goes hand in hand with hurt. Love is wonderful and magnificent and uplifting and miraculous, but it comes at a price. Anyone who has been in love can attest to this. There is no one in this world who would deny the hardships that come with loving someone, the toils that must be endured in order to keep love strong. But we all know that love is worth it. Love is so glorious that we are more than willing to take the ache that comes with it.

And because there is no greater joy than love, there is certainly no pain worse than the loss of love. Death, separation, betrayal, doesn't matter how it happens. A severance of love shatters us in the most permanent ways possible. We are never the same again even if we somehow manage to glue ourselves back together. Perhaps pieces of us are forever missing, or the pieces do not align perfectly, or the new bonds between the pieces are weaker than before.

Danny was now in a serious relationship and so in love, but would his ghostly obsession allow him to undertake the pain that would undoubtedly come with it?

And what if he ended up losing this love and had to face the most tremendous pain there is in this world?

I didn't want to think about that. I hoped and prayed that he would not be too hurt or that he could overcome the compulsions of his obsession if he was.

You must already know how in vain my hopes and prayers were.

...

He whispered, "Where are you?"

I was right there. Who was he talking to?

...

Danny still battled and captured ghosts. I was very worried about what could possibly happen to him, but he certainly did have an advantage when dealing with these ghosts, and these ghosts needed to be dealt with. It was a risk and a sacrifice, but Danny rose to the challenge well.

I often joined him. I was not only an experienced ghost-fighter myself and a curious scientist who had been studying ghosts for years, but I was his mother. I wanted to be there to help him, to protect him if necessary.

At first, Danny was against my involvement. He gave me a number of reasons: too dangerous, too much of a distraction for him, too many limitations I might impose, too many cooks spoiling the broth. But I persisted. I was not about to let my son risk his life alone now that I knew what he had gotten himself into.

There seemed to be no end to the ghosts invading our town. They were everywhere, an infestation of ectoplasmic entities. And they were as Danny described them. They each had their own compulsive obsessions that gave Danny the information he needed to defeat each one. Some ghosts seemed to have one-track minds with little sentience if any. Others appeared to possess intelligence similar to that of humans.

But they were not human because they could not reason through their obsessions. They were controlled by something that they were not always aware of.

Danny was aware of what took control of him when he was transformed. I could see it as he battled, the care he took in his strategies. Sealing ghosts away at even the smallest opportunity even if it could end up being seen as a cheap move. The use of jocular banter to lighten the mood and prevent it from getting too dark and possibly triggering his obsession.

I could see signs of his struggle with his obsession when he was transformed. Flashes in his eyes, twitches at the corners of his mouth, shivers coursing through him. With some of the more difficult ghosts, I could see his attempts to keep things from escalating, his attempts to restrain himself from going as far as he really wanted to. I could see just how much he wanted to hurt some of these ghosts, to transfer all of his pain to them, to annihilate them completely with the desperate belief that his own pain would disappear completely with them. The presence of these ghosts in our town were his fault, all his fault, and if he could just make them all go away, then he wouldn't have to feel so guilty anymore.

But I think he also knew that the resulting pain he would feel from permanently erasing the existence of these ghosts would be too much for him, so he had worked out this compromise of a catch-and-release, capturing the ghosts and then returning them to the Ghost Zone where he hoped beyond hope that they would finally stay this time, begged them to please not come back, please don't make me go through this with you again, can't you see what this is doing to me?

He was truly remarkable, a sight to behold and admire up close. He was beautiful with his impressive physique, his spectral luminescence, and his glittering eyes. He was stunning with his skillful maneuvers, effortless evasions, and swift reflexes. He had me in awe. My once so small son had become a champion, a god, a force of the most superlative caliber.

Was this in him all along, or was this a side effect of his ghostly essence? I knew what tests I could run to figure this out, fantasized about new equipment and hypotheses. I wanted to know, wanted to see what this all really was.

I admit it I admit it I admit it I admit it I admit it I admit it there are you happy now

I did my best to keep up with him, but at my advancing age, I was already losing my agility and flexibility. Mostly, I took it upon myself to help him out if I could see his obsession taking hold of him. A blast to catch his attention, sealing the ghost in a Thermos before he could cause more injury than he wanted to.

"You're certainly better at this than Jazz," he joked with me the first time I joined him. He seemed relieved, as if having me as part of the team would not be as bad as he had envisioned.

I was relieved, too. He was clearly capable of this, and I didn't have to be too worried about him, not with all of his abilities I had seen firsthand.

He was astounding. Incredible. Let me take just one quick look inside, please, Danny, Danny, Danny?

...

Prison. Alone. Isolated. An extravert confined to a life of no one and nothing. The same images day in and day out. The same faces. The same sounds.

The same memories. I remember too well. I want to write it all down for him, just for him, prove to him that I'm not such a coward that I won't confess all of my wrongs and all of my secrets. But when I am done writing, I will hopefully forget it all. I will beg the doctor to give me something to numb my mind, erase everything. Doctor, doctor, give me my nepenthe.

I remember everything that happened with him, but after that until I finally found myself completely bricked up here, I do not remember much, just some lines and statements here and there that conjured particularly powerful feelings. But the rest is so blurry and hazy. The arrest, the trial, the official proceedings.

The questions? I remember one answer I gave often.

"Did you do it?"

"Did you do it, yes or no?"

"Was it you? Did you do it?"

"Were you the one? Did you do it? Did you know who he was? Did you know it was him?"

"Do you know what you did to him? And you did do it to him, yes? It was you?"

"Did you see him? Did you see what you did to him? Did you know what you were doing? Did you do it?"

"God, yes," I replied over and over and over.

...

"Where are you?"

He was talking to God.


	13. .:·:.:·:.:·:

"Danny, please, you're human now," I reminded him. "You said you can reason when you're not in ghost form. Reason through this, Danny."

"But how long until I can't reason anymore?" he asked. "When I get to that point, what then? It will be too late." He held up his hands, held them out in surrender. "I don't want to get to that point. You have to stop me now."

Don't make me.

"End my pain. I can't take it anymore."

Don't make me do this, Danny. What does it prove again and again? Danny, nobody wins.

...

Throughout his childhood, Danny was a rather sensitive child who hated to disappoint me or Jack, hated doing the wrong things and getting in trouble. He only ever wanted to be good, only ever wanted to make us proud. He did so to the best of his abilities. He would apologize profusely anytime I told him he had done something that disappointed me. He would ask me often if I was happy with something he did, sought my reassurance frequently. His grades were never as stellar as our daughter's, but I could tell when he was really trying his best and when he was being lazy, and I let him know when I thought he could do better. He would usually work harder, anxious to correct the problem. To correct himself.

When he entered adolescence, like any teenager, he became a little more stubborn, a little harder to work with. Anytime we would discipline him, he would argue and try to compromise, but he would always give in eventually. What was more, he would actually comply with any restrictions we placed on him, never tried to secretly break them without our knowing. He was the type to always say sorry, never too proud to admit when he was in the wrong. A good quality, perhaps, but I would say he possessed this trait to a fault. Often, he would place all blame on himself, could never see that he was not at one hundred percent fault for everything. I knew this about him, and yet I never thought it was problematic enough that something needed to be done about it. He would've benefited from some therapy, and I had even considered it at times, but I was never sure how to bring it up to him, worried that it would only made him feel more broken, more like he wasn't good enough for us and needed fixing.

But truthfully, it didn't seem to affect him too much, at least not in his early adolescence. I had just thought we had gotten lucky to have such a mild-mannered teenage boy, one who of course got into trouble at times and needed the guidance of his parents as he matured but was overall good-natured and well-behaved. I never thought that this desire of his to be what we wanted and to never feel guilty or bad about anything would ever be his undoing. The basis for his ghostly obsession.

I wonder what my ghostly obsession would be if I became a ghost?

...

I got a call from Casper High one afternoon. Jack was in the basement working. Jazz was gone, attending a prestigious university miles away. The call was of course about Danny, a junior at the time and not yet seventeen.

I had to come right away, had to come and get Danny. An altercation. I immediately assumed that he had been badly hurt, that he needed immediate care.

No, no. He was fine. He wasn't hurt at all. No, it was what he did to the other boy. Come quick.

This couldn't be. Not my Danny, not my docile and passive Danny, Danny, Danny.

I didn't tell Jack the whole story, only told him that I needed to pick Danny up from school. I wanted to be able to talk with him alone first. When I arrived, Danny was bent over in a chair with his head in his hands shaking uncontrollably. The tremors seized him so violently that it was as if he was being jolted by an unseen voltage, and if I were to try to touch him, the charge would surely take hold of me, too.

I never saw the other boy. He was already gone, had been rushed to the hospital. The principal spoke to me privately in her office. Danny's former English teacher, Mr. Lancer, who had managed to break up the fight, was also there. He had a deep red mark on his face, apparently courtesy of my son.

In hushed but serious voices, they told me what happened. It happened during the lunch hour. The other boy was Dash Baxter.

"Dash?" I knew that name. "He's been bullying Danny for years."

"Yes," said the principal. "We're aware of that."

"You are?"

"Yes," confirmed Mr. Lancer. "They have had issues in the past, but it's never gone this far."

"And certainly, this is not something we ever expected to see from Danny," said the principal.

"But he didn't just beat him up unprovoked," I insisted. "Do you know what happened before you broke them up, Mr. Lancer?"

Mr. Lancer shook his head. "No. At least, I didn't see it. We only have student witnesses, most notably his girlfriend, Miss Manson. From what I saw, I can only say that he was very obviously incensed. I had never seen him so angry before, almost as if he wasn't really himself, like he was possessed." He pointed to the mark on his face. "When I stepped in and pulled him off of Dash, he did this."

I tried to imagine the scene, tried to imagine the build-up. Perhaps Dash had tried to hurt him first. Perhaps Dash had said something to him.

"But as soon as he struck me, he seemed to snap out of it," continued Mr. Lancer. He smiled softly. "He packs quite a punch. I hadn't realized just how strong he's gotten, no longer the small boy he was when I first met him."

He was no longer the same boy in a far more significant way.

"When he hit me, it was as if whatever had possessed him left just as quickly as it came." Mr. Lancer gestured to the door where Danny was waiting outside. "He was completely compliant, completely repentant. Did not try to defend his actions, did not try to argue."

That sounded like my Danny, all right.

"From what Sam and other students have told us," said the principal, "it sounds as if Dash had been taunting Danny, slamming him into the lockers, making inappropriate remarks about Sam. It seems the final straw was when Dash started personally insulting Danny, calling him names and getting on him for never fighting back."

"So he was defending himself," I said. "You can't expel him for that. He should be able to defend himself."

"Mrs. Fenton," said the principal gently but firmly, "Danny completely knocked Dash out, gave him a concussion and multiple possible fractures in his face and upper torso. Dash was so bloodied and swollen that he was barely recognizable."

"It was certainly excessive force," said Mr. Lancer, "especially since Danny himself has no injuries at all."

"Yes," agreed the principal. "Whether or not Danny overpowered Dash so immediately that Dash simply did not have the opportunity to fight back, we do not know, but it is evident that Danny beat Dash far beyond what we can reasonably call self-defense."

"What does that mean?" I asked tensely. "What's going to happen to him? With school?"

"We will discuss this with the school board and will take into consideration his bullied history with Dash," said the principal, "but until we reach a final decision, Danny is not permitted to return to his classes."

I was angry, but I tried to calm myself when I stepped out of the office. I needed to be composed so that I could speak to Danny about this. He was still shaking when I walked up to him. I called his name softly, put a hand on his back. He looked up at me. I'll never forget that look, one of shame and guilt and apprehension and fear and pain, so much pain.

I didn't take him home right away. I drove away from the school and parked in the first nearly vacant parking lot I saw.

In the passenger seat, Danny was once again holding his head and shaking. I stayed silent for some time, just watched him and waited for an opening, a glance at me or a deep breath. But he showed no signs of stopping, no signs of calming down.

I leaned over and tried to embrace him as best as I could. After a few minutes in this quiet hug, he finally straightened up.

"Can you tell me what happened?" I asked him in a whisper. "I want to know from you."

His eyes were red and misted over. "I don't know if I can," he said very quietly, so hushed that his vocal cords were probably only barely moving.

I could see that he meant this literally. He seemed choked, as if talking was indeed a laborious task for him.

"Do you want to tell me, Danny?"

He only nodded as he inhaled deeply. I waited for him. At last, he began to tell me how it started. Typical bullying behavior from Dash toward him. Names, insults, shoves. When Dash first began targeting Danny in this manner years ago, Danny would simply fall back and let him. Danny was a small boy, and Dash was more than twice his size. Danny figured it was better to just surrender in order to reduce the damage. He would not even speak in his defense, just passively accepted whatever Dash chose to inflict on him. He was so quiet on this front that I did not find out until the end of his freshman year that he was having this problem with Dash at all, and as soon as I found out, I called up the school immediately and reported it. Danny later told me that Dash had stopped targeting him, and I thought that was the end of that.

But I was wrong. I was a terrible parent. I had been too focused on myself and my research and not enough on him.

Even as Danny grew in size and gained more muscle due to his ghostly activities, he still remained passive in Dash's treatment. At some point, he must've realized that he could overpower Dash at any time if he wanted to, but he restrained himself.

But not this time.

"He was saying terrible things about Sam. Awful things." Danny didn't look at me as he spoke, either stared past the front window or down.

"And that made you angry?"

"It did, but that's not what made me snap. Those words weren't directed at  _me_ , so I was angry but not hurt."

I could see where this was headed.

"I wanted to punch him when he talked about Sam that way. I really did. But I could stop myself from doing that. I told him to stop talking about Sam in that way, but of course that only encouraged him. But I still resisted punching him. If I was going to settle this score with him anywhere, I certainly didn't want it to be at school with everyone there. And, of course, I planned on only going far enough to prove my point."

_Can you see just how powerful his ghostly obsession is?_

"But then his remarks were suddenly directed at me personally, telling me I could never be good enough for Sam or any girl because I have no fight, that I always just lie down and take it from him, just a coward who will never be a real man. That was the trigger. After all I had done for this town, for  _him_ , how could he possibly say that to me? If he could just know the truth, if he could only see exactly the man I've become while he sleeps soundly every night. Something took hold of me, and I just had to make him stop, had to make his remarks stop. I had to make them not true. I was able to knock him over with just a few blows, so quickly that he had no opportunity to strike back. He couldn't possibly stand a chance against me, not after all of my fighting experience, not with all of my phantom strength. Not at all surprising to me, but perhaps quite surprising to everyone there."

_Powerful enough to grant him the most devastating of abilities._

"He was down, but I couldn't stop. I was being controlled by something unseen, something unstoppable. I didn't even realize what was happening. All I could think about was how I had to make him stop, had to prove to him that I was the stronger one and that I only  _let_  him bully me. I could see just how far I was going, that I was going too far. But there was no reasoning with me." He looked down at his hands. "Phantom had me. I wasn't even transformed, and yet I was not human in that moment. I was a ghost compelled by obsession."

_Powerful enough to blacken his soul entirely._

"It wasn't until I accidentally punched Lancer that I was able to regain control over Phantom." He leaned back and drew in a breath. "When I saw just what I had done to Dash, I was overcome with grief and guilt, and I knew there was no way to defend it." His voice became quiet and shaky. "I feel so terrible." He put his head in his hands. "What do I do?"

I could see his anxiety and pain escalating right before my eyes. What he did to Dash was horrible, but no one else knew his secret, that there was something supernatural coursing through him that made him do it. We could never tell anyone the truth. They would just think we were trying to shift the blame, that we were trying to excuse his behavior by plea of insanity.

But I could see just how real this problem was. Danny was not violent at all, and for him to resort to this had to mean that there was something very persuasive inside of him, something from his ghostly side that was getting stronger and manifesting in his human side.

"I can't go back. I can't ever go back. I can't face my classmates again. I can't face Dash again. I can't face Lancer again." His eyes turned to me, so full of anguish.

I studied him and nodded. Yes, even if the school board opted to not expel him, Danny would be reminded of this painful memory everywhere he went in that building.

I enrolled Danny in a school a little farther away. Sadako High, home of the Cranes. He was a Casper High Raven no longer. He kept to himself while there and did not make any new friends. It seemed that he wanted to stay as hidden as possible.

...

"Vlad. Tell me about Vlad," the prison therapist asks.

The way I feel now. I've felt it before. It's the nauseating feeling of vertigo and dizziness one experiences when hit by a blast of ghostly ectoplasm.

I would frequently join Danny in his moonlit ghost fights. Danny would always triumph somehow. Some injuries that needed tending to at times, but he always won somehow, always subdued the threat somehow.

I was by his side. There were multiple ghosts, and Danny was struggling to keep them all away. I ran in, hit as many as I could with my own ghostly combat weapon.

But then I was on the ground, and everything was blurry and quiet. It was so unbearably hot, but as soon as I tried to sit up, everything was cold. I lay down again and tried to catch my breath, waited for my blood pressure to stabilize. It was as if something sharp was running through my veins, tightening them. I was dropping even though I was already on the ground.

Danny was kneeling beside me with a Fenton Thermos in hand, but he was no longer transformed. He was my blue-eyed boy, my Danny, Danny, Danny.

"I'm so sorry," he was saying.

I smiled and took his hand. "What are you sorry for? It seems to me that you saved me."

He didn't return the smile. "No, I didn't. I shouldn't have let this happen."

"Danny, you saved me," I insisted gently but firmly. I didn't tell him not to feel bad as I knew that would only make him feel worse.

"Vlad?" the therapist is still asking. "Tell me about him."

I am dropping again.

"Perhaps it's Vlad," the therapist says. "It's Vlad, isn't it? He makes you feel this way."

You've found the cause. Now give me the cure.


	14. .:·:.:·:.:·:.

The rest of Danny's junior year and all of his senior year passed with little incident. In a new environment where no one knew him, Danny seemed to be able to stay in control of his emotions. I have no doubt that students tried to fellowship him and that girls swooned over him, but he was insistent on distancing himself from everyone in that school. He drove himself to and from the campus but never gave rides to anyone, never brought anyone home with him. He never stayed for after school activities, never went to any games or parties.

"Danny, it's okay to make new friends," I told him.

"I don't need new friends," he said. "I just need to get through high school and finally get out of this town."

Yes, my Danny was going to leave soon. I had tried to get him to attend a community college in town so that he could stay nearby, but Sam had been accepted to a prestigious university a couple hundred miles away, and he simply had to join her. He was not able to get into the same university, but he was accepted to one within the vicinity. Out of state tuition, but Jack and I could afford it. We had enough money for all of our ghostly inventions, after all. We had enough money to send him anywhere he was accepted.

"But if you leave, who will take care of the ghosts here?" I asked him. I shouldn't have said this. I was intentionally playing on his ghostly obsession. So terrible of me. But I just wanted so much for him to stay.

He shut his eyes. His mind was working hard as he tried to reason with his compulsion. "There haven't been as many ghosts lately. Just keep the portal turned off whenever you're not using it." He paused. "I can't be away from Sam. I can't. I must be with her."

That was it, then. Separation from love would be far more painful than the guilt he would feel from failing to protect our town. How I was resenting Sam more and more.

"Vlad will be able to stop any ghosts." Danny grinned at me. "As long as  _you're_  in this town, he'll definitely protect it."

He didn't walk at his high school graduation. I tried to get him to go, to don the cap and gown, but he refused. I didn't push the issue because what point would there have been? He had no friends at this new school and would have had no one to celebrate with. I had always thought this would be such a happy and memorable time for him as it is for any normal high school student. As with Jazz, I had been excited to capture the moment on camera, to have graduation photos to display in our home. Oh well, I told myself. He would surely walk at his university commencement. That would be a far more important achievement anyway.

I'll skip ahead just a bit and tell you that no, he did not walk at his university commencement either.

Sam and Tucker both walked in the Casper High graduation ceremony. I'm sure Danny would've been there to support them if he wasn't so ashamed to face his former classmates and teachers and if it wouldn't have been considered trespassing since the school board opted to formally expel him. He couldn't even bring himself to be there invisibly in his ghost form. No, he had to stay away from that world he was once part of.

Danny, Sam, and Tucker celebrated their graduations on their own. They went out for the night and didn't return until very late. I specified no time for Danny to return. He was eighteen and graduated, legally an adult. Perhaps other parents would've been worried, but I trusted Danny.

When the time finally came for Danny to leave home, I was heartbroken but held it together as best as I could for him. I wanted him to stay, but I knew it was time to let him go. He had to go and find himself without the influence of his parents. He had to become his own man.

I wrapped my arms around him. His strong arms were around me as well. He had now surpassed me in height and size, and realizing that he was no longer my little boy was overwhelming. I started crying.

"Mom," said Danny worriedly, "are you okay?"

I nodded and gave him a tearful smile. "I just didn't realize how quickly the day I'd have to look up at you would come."

Danny shrugged, almost apologetically. "Well, I had to grow up someday, didn't I?"

"You did." I hugged him again. "I'm really going to miss you. And I'm so proud of you."

"I'll miss you, too," he said quietly, "and thank you."

I looked at him at arm's length, pushed the bangs from his forehead so I could his handsome face better. "Call me whenever you need something. Anything. Even if it's just an ear." I moved in closer. "And Danny, please…please try to…try not to…" I didn't know how to finish my sentence. I wanted to tell him to not let his ghostly obsession take him over again, to find healthy ways to combat it and deal with his emotional pain. But how to say it delicately?

"Just remember you're not alone," I finally said. "Don't try to go through any difficulties on your own. You have good friends and a loving family who will do anything for you." I ran my hand through his hair. "Especially your mom."

He knew the deeper implication, but he only nodded.

My Danny, Danny, Danny was then gone and miles away.

…

Prison. I am in prison, and he is in the ground. We all have our jobs to do, chores to keep us busy. Currently, my job is laundry. I share this responsibility with Baskova. I quickly fold the various garments and put them in neat, crisp piles.

Baskova is struggling. She is much slower, her fingers not quite as adept as mine.

"Here," I tell her. I show her how to fold step by step, carefully walk and talk her through it. She is still unable to fold as quickly and as skillfully as I can, but she is smiling now. She has more confidence.

I am smiling for some reason, too. She is a decade older than me, but I have missed having someone to teach and to tend to. I am a scientist, yes, but I am also a nurturer. I miss being a mother more than I miss being a scientist. It is nice to have someone who looks up to me, someone I can help.

"That's good, Klara," I say, affectionately using her first name.

"Thank you, Maddie," she says cheerfully with her thick endearing accent.

The others take notice of my fondness toward Baskova.

"What are you getting at?" asks Peterman. "You really expect us to buy this mother hen act?"

"Right," says Chamberlain. Her tone is hostile. "We all know what you did to your kid."

I inhale sharply but say nothing.

"You say you loved him?" taunts Peterman.

Love. I still love him.

"How can you say that after what you did to him?" demands Chamberlain.

"You tortured him, maimed him. All we did was kill our men, but you destroyed yours, and not just any man. Your own son."

"You're a horrible mother."

"Why did you bother having him if you were just going to slaughter him?"

I shut them out, block them out, sprint away to my cell and hide. They have no idea, none at all. They have no idea what more I could've done to him, what more I wanted to do to him.

I didn't want him to leave for college. I wanted him to stay. I wanted him all to myself.

Had I really had my way, he would've been alive and awake for it all. He'd have been bound and gagged and blindfolded, shackled to my observation table. Supine, arms above his head, restraints around his wrists and ankles holding him down at just these points so that I can see the arch in his spine when he screams. Restraints that are ghost-resistant, but it would not matter anyway because I would inject him with my special concoction, a solution that halts any changes to his molecules. No going intangible or invisible. No returning to his coloring that so resembles that of his father. He is a ghost and nothing more.

I'd slip the blindfold on tight over his glowing eyes, affix a gag in his mouth so that his cries can be heard but not articulated. If he were any other ghost, perhaps I'd let him see everything as it happened, let him say everything on his mind and make a record of his utterances. But I am already in so much misery that I cannot allow our eyes to meet, cannot hear what he has to say. I fear that I'll back out, that I won't be able to go through with it. He must be blindfolded so that I can't see the boy I brought into this world in his eyes, gagged so that he can't beg his mother to stop, please, stop, let him go. Besides, it's easier for him to take if he knows he has no choice, no chance of escape, no way to make me reconsider. It is better for his sake that he be kept blind and silenced. I am doing him a favor. He can only lie back and accept what happens to him.

I check his vitals first, record the spectral readings. I will keep track of them throughout and see how they change in response to the various procedures. His vitals suggest extreme panic and fear but not yet pain. Can they possibly get any higher than they are now?

I start out simply. Taps with a hammer to see which parts might be most sensitive. He flinches with each hit, stays quiet with the softer hits and cries out with the harder ones. Will this cause bruises? I'll have to see later, but for now, I keep him clothed.

I give him a small shock, a test. I can see the tightening tension traveling through him, his muscles clenching. The veins in his head pulse noticeably as it tilts back, and his back, oh, yes, how beautifully his spine arcs. I stop the shock and watch him fall back, panting and heaving and moaning.

How much more can he take? Can he take more than the average human? Does this hurt him nearly as much as it would a normal human?

More voltage. His back is even higher off of the table than before, his spine so bent it looks as if about to break. His ankles and wrists are being pulled hard against the constraints, cutting and bruising them. I'll look at them later, see how such injuries manifest on a ghost. His head is back as far it will go, tears soaking through his blindfold and pooling around him on the table.

And his screams from behind and around the stopper in his mouth are marvelous, the destructive strums of his ghostly wail strangled and blocked by the gag. I am tempted to tear it away and hear the raw resonance of his suffering. The acoustics in this room are perfect and will surely create the most haunting echo effect. But I do not, no, because I am afraid of the words he might speak. Even quelled through the gag, his expression of agony is clear. He is definitely feeling this.

The shock ceases, and he collapses back onto the table. His chest is rising and falling rapidly. His body is convulsing and shaking. His tears are still coming fast, and he is whimpering and certainly begging for this to end, but his words fail to reach me through the gag. No, this can't end now. I will end him soon enough, but not now. He will have to wait. He has no choice.

His breaths are shallow and labored. But how much oxygen does a ghost really need? Is it as essential for ghostly cell function as it is for living cell function? Perhaps he doesn't need it at all. Perhaps breathing is just a habit unnecessarily retained from his human existence.

Reaching, clutching, I deprive him of air. His whimpers are immediately silenced with no breath to move his vocal cords. He lasts for a remarkable amount of time—ghosts metabolize oxygen differently, after all—but then he is trying to break away, moving his head side to side. He is becoming more violent in my grasp, but then he is fading, slowing down, surrendering.

It seems he is bound by at least one of the same biochemical processes as any living being. I release him, watch him gasp and cough and choke and sob. He is no longer trying to speak. He has given up and given in.

So many spikes in his vitals, so many dips. How fast can I make his pulse race? How low can I make his ectoplasmic pressure drop? How far can I disturb the balance of his electrolytes? Can he freeze? Can he burn? Can he distend? Can he bruise?

He can certainly cry.

I expose him fully, strip him so that his bare skin can be fully examined. He is glowing so brightly I don't even need an operating light, but I keep it trained on him anyway. Green marks are visible in sporadic patterns, broken capillaries, developing contusions. Lacerations and far darker discolorations surround his wrists and his ankles beneath his restraints. He is still now, the only movement the rising and falling of his chest. He is surely wishing each breath could somehow be his last, but he cannot end yet.

I take off my gloves and run my fingers over his spectral skin. It is glacial and prickly, tingling against my biological warmth. Almost like tangling with vapor, but it is vapor that is corporeal, vapor that has a definite shape. I place a warming light over him to see if I can raise his temperature. Is there a limit to the heat a ghost can bear?

He writhes and moans. His temperature climbs, his skin indeed becomes warm to the touch. Inside, he is boiling and scorching, expanding and fully opening to this calefaction. He hyperventilates, his breaths arduous and scraping against his lungs and airway. His pulse quickens, weakens. His movements slow and slow until his hands fall back and his head tilts away from me. Passed out. I run my fingers over him again, up his chest to his neck. Warm but dry. He is not drenched with sweat as any human would be under the intense light I have placed over him, as any human would be after enduring such torture.

I revive him, bring him back to consciousness. The heat is gone, and his temperature is down again. He is quivering and weeping.

"What are you?" I ask him.

He doesn't answer, can't answer. He doesn't know anyway.

I caress his face, still blindfolded and gagged. I tug at the translucent strands of his hair, trace the masculine line of his jaw. He winces and tilts his head away, but I forcibly pull him back to remind him of his powerlessness.

I lower myself to his level, brush his ear with my lips. I speak to him, whisper the taunts that I was never able to say to his other self, the secrets that I've been hiding from him, the lust for him I've been harboring in the corners of my scientific mind.

X-rays can only let me see so much, see so far. I must reach his core, must discover his center.

A puncture, an intravenous line. He feels it and twitches. His panic is rising as indicated not only by his vitals but by the tremors coursing through him. He responds humanly to medications. A dose of suxamethonium chloride, and he is now not moving because he cannot. I remove the gag, but he cannot speak. He is awake and aware, but he is now paralyzed. I intubate him, force a length of tubing down his tracheal passage to be sure that he gets the oxygen his ghostly lungs need just as much as any biological pair of lungs. He must remain alive, after all.

He is mine. I murmur my possession of him in his ear, the final words he hears from me. But he cannot even shudder in response.

The first incision is intoxicating. The first breach of his skin with my lancet is gorgeous and leaves a trail of the most precious peridots. I run the blade along his anterior chest wall and lift the resulting flaps laterally. The monitor beeps in warning indicating extreme spikes in his vitals, reminding me that he is still awake. I dive in deeper, tear through the fibrous tissue and the heads of his pectoral muscles and his subclavius muscles and—

Yes, yes, so many layers concealing his center. I keep the essential parts intact, not ready to lose him just yet. He has remnants from his human existence, components that remained but have been imbued with spectral properties. Cephalic vein, thoracoacromial artery. I have been studying human anatomy intently, wondering what I might find in him when I finally reached this point, finally had him at the end of my scalpel. Giddy and lightheaded, a peculiar pocket of what feels like helium is in the center of my chest and is pulling me up while the rest of me is heavy and rooted right here in this moment, right here with him. I am high on the culmination of my anticipation.

Deeper still, I break him apart. Complex and difficult, but I am patient and precise. Bone cutters and a costotome, I hack and saw through him, into him, assault his caverns and walls until I reach his core. I latch onto it, claim it, own it. He is covering me and all over me while I am occupying him and inside him. The most exhilarating euphoria, my moment of greatest triumph; I am dangerously close to fainting.

I am only mournful that the paralysis induced by the drug administered from his intravenous drip must affect his vocal cords as well. His silence is disappointing.

It's over. I am finished with him. I take off the blindfold at last. He looks so perplexed. Does he not see what I have done for him? I have brought him to the brink of his obsession and thrust him beyond it, forced him to endure the most excruciating agony with no way to stop it. I have cured him. I have fixed him. I have saved him.

This is what you wanted, right?


	15. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:

I often paid for Danny to fly back to Amity Park for visits throughout his time away in college. For holidays, for vacations, for Jazz's wedding. But sometimes, I paid for him to come out just because I missed him.

"Danny." Danny, Danny, Danny. Over the phone. He was in his senior year, his second to last semester. "Danny, what's your schedule look like? When can I see you again?"

He laughed. "Mom, you just saw me a couple weeks ago! And I'm pretty busy. You know, with college. And work."

I had told him he didn't have to get a job, that Jack and I were more than happy to support him so that he could just focus on his education, but he had been insistent this past year on getting a part-time campus job.

"Maybe I can come to you, then."

"No, that's—I'll see what exams I have coming up, look at my work schedule, talk it over with Sam. I'll let you know, okay?"

"And how are things with Sam?"

"Great!" He sounded happy. "She's still got a perfect GPA, of course. People keep wondering how I managed to get a girl so obviously out of my league."

No one knew the secret league that Danny was. But I knew. "They don't say that to you, do they?"

"No, but I'm so sure they're wondering."

He seemed okay. But I missed him so much, wished I could do more than just call him frequently to check up on him.

"Mom, um…are you sure you want me to come out again so soon?"

His question concerned me. Why would he doubt that? "Of course, Danny. You're my favorite son."

"Is that the only reason?"

What was he really asking?

Home with me again, just for the weekend. Never long enough, but I always made the most of his visits. After picking him up from the airport, he lay on the living room couch for "just a minute," exhausted from the plane ride. Close enough for me to touch and hold once again. My Danny.

Jack came up from our basement lab and paused at the sight of our sleeping son. "Danny's here again?"

"Yes," I replied. "Didn't I tell you?"

"I guess I missed the memo." Jack looked at me curiously. What was he thinking? I'll never know.

I headed to the grocery store while Danny napped and returned about an hour later with a car full of all of his favorite things to eat. I would make him whatever he wanted, whatever he requested, whatever made him happy.

I opened the trunk of my car, sighed at the number of bags. It would take me multiple trips to get these all inside.

But then Danny was suddenly by my side. "I can get these, Mom."

"Danny! I thought you were taking a nap?"

"I heard you drive up."

"Thanks, sweetie."

I grabbed a couple bags. Danny began to hook the rest over his arms.

"Danny, you don't have to get them all in one trip!"

Danny playfully grinned at me and flexed one of his muscled arms. "I got this. I've been working out."

He was fully grown now. Physically mature. I turned away so he couldn't see just how overwhelmed I was by the man he had become.

We walked inside together, but you are worried. You are worried about why I was so insistent on him coming to visit. You are worried about how this relates to what I wrote before, my sinister reverie of what I wanted to do to him, wondering how I can possibly reminisce about him so fondly and so casually dismiss the horror I confessed before. You find this recollection of his visit disconcerting and strange, disturbing now that you know the extent of my licentious thirst to dive into him. Truthfully, I probably wouldn't have mentioned that fantasy at all, wouldn't have detailed it so finely except that I knew you wanted me to. You've been waiting so long to see just how sick I am. No, actually, I think it's more likely that you want to see him in pain.

I aim to please.

And honestly, I can hardly blame you. He does respond so beautifully to pain. Maybe that's why he was constantly being targeted and victimized.

It's peculiar how much we want to see our heroes cry.

…

Prison. A visitor. The same visitor as always.

I can't do this anymore. I know it's not Jack. I know it's  _him_.

"No," I tell the guards as they come for me. "Tell him not this time. Tell him never again."

The guards ignore my refusal and shackle me.

"No," I say again. I pull away. They pull me forward.

They are dragging me, forcing me down the corridor. I twist and yell.

"He has too much money," says one guard.

"He has too much power," says the other.

Their tones are strange and robotic.

"We can't say no to him."

Their eyes are glowing.

I sit across from Vlad. He has me trapped here.

"I don't want to see you anymore," I tell him.

"I'm all you have," says Vlad. "No one else will visit you, not Jack, not Jazz."

I shut my eyes.

"You don't want to be alone, do you?"

"I don't want to see you anymore," I say again.

"I want to see you."

Why does it have to be me?

Why did it have to be Danny?

"I have to see you," says Vlad. "Maddie, I'm the only one who still cares about you."

"You care about yourself. You don't care about me."

"That's not true."

"Then why am I here, Vlad?"

Hesitation. He looks confused.

"If you cared about me, you would've cared about him, too, and if you had cared about him, you wouldn't have gotten into his head, wouldn't have forced him to a point where I had to—" I don't finish. I can't.

"He was disturbed long before I started actually talking to him," says Vlad. "You really think I am so influential that I could've brought him to that point all on my own?"

"So you admit that you helped him get there?"

Vlad groans in frustration. "No, I am not admitting that. I only talked to him, Maddie. He needed someone to listen to him, someone to vent to, and I was just that person at times." He crosses his arms, looks down. "I was the only person who could relate to his struggle, after all. Seeing as I have a parallel struggle of my own."

He is referring to his ghostly obsession. Perfection, the perfect life and house and status and family and lover. Perfection and power. It is all he has ever wanted.

I suppose I must be perfect to him. The only flaw is that I feel nothing but hatred for him. No, he can't have that. He is compelled to visit me in the hopes of making me feel something else for him.

"You did more than talk to him. You made him feel as if he had no control over his feelings."

"He didn't, Maddie." Vlad sounds tired and irritated, as if he has tried to explain this to me so many times. "You can't possibly understand because you're not a ghost, but he was losing what little control he had in his human state. Why do you think therapy wasn't helping him at all?"

"You should've just left him alone."

"He needed someone to talk to candidly."

"He had me."

"You?" Vlad throws up his hands. "You, the one who could only view his struggle on a clinical, scientific level? You, the one who ran test after test on him trying to figure out what was making him that way? As if it was some disease or mutation?"

"He asked me to do that."

"You only further fueled his obsession. Complying with his wishes only made him think that there really was something wrong with him, that if the error in his system could just be found, then he could overcome it. He could never see that he did have at least some power over his obsession, that he could find coping strategies if he just stopped seeing it as something terminal and inescapable."

No, but it  _was_ a flaw, and I'm sure I could've invented something to help him if I had just found it in time.

I am sobbing now.

"It was you, Maddie," says Vlad, his voice low and cracking. "You were the one who made him feel broken, not me."

I clutch my knees. My tears are falling on my hands. "God damn you," I gasp out.

Vlad scoffs and regains strength in his voice. "That's no way for scientists like us to talk." He is looking at me, but I can't meet his gaze. "We both know there's no God."

No God to pray to for absolution. No God to keep my Danny for me until I can see him again. No way for me to ever apologize to him.

"Where are you?" I cry.


	16. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·

The superheroes of comics and cartoons and movies truly are something. Why are they so popular? What is it about them that draws us in? We envy their powers, their spectacular feats, their ordinary lives offsetting their miraculous secrets.

But then why are the most popular and most-loved heroes those with the most flaws, the darkest conflicts, the most terrifying battles of not only dangerous external circumstances but the gravest internal struggles?

Perhaps because they are the most human. We relate to these heroes more because we see them reacting to the ramifications and responsibilities associated with their powers in human ways. But all the while, we are hoping that there is something in them that still makes them better than us, a part that truly sets them apart as "super."

Because in reality, those with that kind of power, no matter how well-intentioned and "good" they are in the beginning, would be driven insane as they realized their attempts to rid the world of evil are completely futile. So much power, and yet it is hopeless against a world that is brimming with insurmountable corruption.

But oh, how they try. Their greatest superpower must certainly be to stay good and pure and sane with all of that maddening power inside them. That's what has us most in awe.

Danny was unfortunately a superhero constrained by reality. Overwhelmed by the vast power within him, he could not find the strength to stay sane.

But oh, how he tried.

…

Winter break. Danny had finished his second to last semester of college and was home once again, but this time for three and a half weeks. I was beside myself with excitement. Jack and I decorated the whole house inside and out, all of our best lights and holiday décor.

Bundled in his warmest clothes, he looked so precious waiting along the road at the airport. I jumped out of my car and hugged him tight, kissed his forehead several times.

"The way you greet me every time I come home, one would think you hadn't seen me in years!" he joked with the language of a seasoned college student.

"Any length of time without you is far too long, Danny."

He smiled. His eye twitched slightly.

For the first few days, it was just him. I had him all to myself, and I couldn't be more thrilled.

"Here, Danny. Try one of these snickerdoodles."

Danny looked up from his cell phone and happily took one of the cookies on the plate I held out to him. "Can't say no to that."

He resumed texting, bit into the cookie almost absentmindedly.

"Well?"

He looked up at me again.

"Is it good?"

He chuckled. "Yes, sorry. It's fantastic." He looked back at his phone.

"Who are you texting?" I asked even though I already knew the answer.

"Sam," he sighed out.

"When's she coming again?"

"Three days." He sighed again. "I wish she could've flown out with me, but her finals schedule didn't match up with mine."

Sam would be coming soon to take Danny away from me again. I made the most of those three days. We went shopping together, saw movies, ate at all of our favorite restaurants. Jack joined us, of course, but I really only remember the conversations I had with Danny. I even remember what he was wearing each day.

Think whatever you want. I loved my son, and I missed him terribly when he was gone.

The day before Sam was to arrive, Danny showed me something that he had been saving his money for, something that he had fretted over for months.

"It's pretty," I said. It was a small diamond ring, nothing too overwhelming, but still beautiful in its simplicity. Now I knew why he had insisted on getting a job this past year.

"I want to propose to her Christmas Day." His eyes were bright with excitement. "I know that maybe that's silly, especially since she's Jewish, but she still loves Christmas a lot, and I didn't want to wait until the last day of Hanukkah."

"Have you two been talking about getting married?" He had not yet mentioned this possibility, so I was confused by this sudden development.

"We have. For a while now. We've been talking about getting engaged after we graduate." He looked down at the ring again. "But I just can't wait any longer."

He closed the ring box and held it close to his heart. His smile was so genuine, so sweet. He was happy, and even though I knew it meant that he would officially no longer be mine, that he would soon start his new immediate family that would push me out into his extended family, it filled me with such joy to see him look so full of light. That dark time for him back in high school still haunted me, and any time I saw him look this happy was treasured.

Perhaps this was the one path that Clockwork had spoken of, the best path that would erase his dark future.

I wanted it to be true.

The day came for Sam to fly in. Danny had such lightness in his step as he counted down the hours until he picked her up from the airport.

Despite knowing that Sam would be snatching up all of his attention, I had to smile at just how cute my son was as he practically danced around the house.

We sat in the living room together watching a Christmas special on TV. His cell phone rang.

"Sam's calling me." He smiled curiously. "I told her to text when her plane was about to take off, but an actual call is even better."

He answered excitedly. I watched him light up.

And then I watched him burn down.

Panic. Alarm. He jumped off the couch and ran up the stairs to his old room. I stared after him with a slacked jaw.

An hour passed, and he was still in his room. I stood outside his closed door, stopped myself from trying to enter. I could hear his low, hysterical voice on the other side, but I could only catch a few words here and there, not enough to make sense of what happened.

Hours later when the sky was dark and Danny had still not emerged from his room, it became apparent that Sam was not coming. I sat in the kitchen with Jack, both of us anxious.

Danny appeared in the kitchen doorway with bloody eyes and a face drained of all color. I immediately ran up to him. "Danny! What is it? What happened?"

"I'm going out," he said flatly. "With Tucker. I don't know when I'll be back."

I smoothed back matted hair off of his forehead. He did not react.

"What happened with Sam?" asked Jack, appearing at my side. "Can you at least tell us that?"

Danny's gaze was unfocused. "She's not coming. Her parents are flying her out to their mountain cabin instead."

Jack and I waited for him to say more, but he did not even move.

"Are you and Sam okay, Danny?" I asked gently.

He shook his head, and then he left for the night. Jack and I stayed up late waiting for him, but at one in the morning, Jack convinced me to try to get some sleep.

But I was so consumed with worry for my Danny's happiness that I was not able to fall asleep for hours. I watched the minutes tick by on my bedside clock. I could not get the image of Danny's distraught expression, his red eyes swollen with tears that had dried.

Heartbreak. The strongest emotional pain there is, so powerfully formidable that it is the subject of countless songs and poems and anguished letters and pleading phone calls and screaming arguments and sobbing suicides and violent murders—

And Danny was experiencing it.

Danny, one whose ghostly obsession with ending his pain could bring about his greatest fear, his dark enemy that lay dormant within him.

_Fate is very jealous. She will claim her prey at any cost._

Danny was being preyed on, and this appeared to be one of the traps that had been set to ensnare him.

…

I sat on the front steps. Huddled over, eyes drooped.

Vlad drove up and was soon beside me. He looked down at me, stared down at me, covered in blood that was not my own.

"What did you do?" he asked.

Not what happened. He knew I had done something.

"Maddie." He spoke louder, more slowly. "What did you do?"

I did not reply. Did not even look at him.

He entered the house. I stayed where I was.

"Oh, my God." I heard his muffled cry through the open door. "Oh, my God."

Come, Vlad. That's no way for scientists like us to talk.

But even if God did exist, I doubt He would've stopped me.


	17. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:

Danny, Danny, Danny, what if we could start again?

You never leave me alone. A flash of light, and it's you with that strange otherworldly glow and green eyes from neither me nor Jack. A glimpse of the sky, and your eyes are blue again, and you're standing in front of me. I try to blink you away, but you stay.

You never leave me alone. Just like I could never leave you alone.

…

Early morning, the morning after Sam was supposed to arrive. I had not slept very much at all, but I could not stay in bed anymore. I checked to see if Danny was in his room, but he was not. I tried to calm myself. Danny was a grown man and could look after himself. Perhaps he had decided to stay with Tucker the whole night.

Downstairs, I found Danny lying on the living room couch. I sighed with relief that he was safe, but he was clearly not well.

I called his name, gently shook his shoulder. He moaned and opened his eyes which still looked irritated but not as bloodshot as before.

"Hey, Danny. Do you want some breakfast? What would you like me to make?"

He covered his eyes with his arm. "No. I don't feel good. Couldn't even make it up the stairs."

"Not good how? Hangover? Do you want some water?"

Danny shook his head under his arm. "No. I don't drink. Alcohol does weird things to my ghost side."

"Weird things?" This intrigued me. I had not yet studied the effects of alcohol on ghosts, had not even thought about it. "Like what?"

"It just makes me feel really sick," he mumbled. "And it impairs my judgment, even more than it already is, and it's worse when I transform."

I was already thinking about the tests I could run, the possible results and explanations. "Wait, sick how? Impaired how?"

"I don't want to talk about it." Danny's arm was still draped over his eyes.

I couldn't let this go. It was too fascinating to me. His pain was falling by the wayside as I latched onto this new information. "But what do you think causes it?"

"Who cares, Mom?" snapped Danny. He uncovered his eyes and propped himself up on his arm. "Can you just leave me alone?"

His glare was so intense and angry and hurt. So hurt. I slowly stood and walked to the kitchen, glanced back to see that he was once again lying down and covering his eyes.

Danny was despondent for days after that. No matter how hard Jack and I tried to engage him in anything to take his mind off of Sam, he remained morose and disconsolate.

But he did finally open up to me about what had happened.

"She broke up with me," he admitted.

I had already assumed this was the case, but it was good to have a direct confirmation. Sitting next to him on his bed, I put a comforting hand on his back as he leaned forward.

"I just don't understand." His voice was breaking. "I thought we were fine."

"Did she say why?"

Danny shut his eyes tightly. He hugged himself, dug his nails into his upper arms. I rubbed his back and waited for him to find the strength to speak.

"I didn't tell you, but we had some problems. I mean… _I_  had some problems."

I didn't like the sound of that.

"Just…with, you know…my obsession."

I really didn't like that.

"I tried—I  _still_  try—to keep it under control, but any time I feel some sort of injustice, any time I feel hurt or slighted, I have to eliminate it somehow. I fixate on such things so much that I won't— _can't_ —return to normal for some time…and I guess it was starting to wear on Sam, especially at the times when she was the one who hurt me."

"Hurt you how?"

"Well, you know. I mean, we would fight sometimes. Every couple fights, right? But I just get  _so_  worked up about even the smallest offenses, and our fights were starting to get more and more frequent, and they were more and more focused on my…sensitivities." He bit his lip. He looked somewhat embarrassed.

"You're making it sound like it was all your fault," I murmured.

"It was." Danny put his head in his hands and started shaking, a movement that I never liked seeing. "It was all my fault. Why am I this way? Why can't I just stop being so sensitive? Why do I feel like I have to put a stop to every painful feeling I have?"

"Danny, please—"

"I'll never be good enough for anyone. If not even Sam can accept me, the girl who's been my friend since we were kids, then who else possibly can? And I probably shouldn't be with anyone anyway, not when I can't deal with my issues."

Inconsolable. I couldn't reach him.

"I hate how much I've hurt Sam. I don't want to hurt anyone that much ever again." He clutched at his chest. "And I don't want to feel this ever again."

Heartbreak. Terrible, yes, but also a normal and perhaps even necessary part of life. I tried to tell him that, tried to tell him that everyone experiences it at one point or another and that the best we can do is try to learn from it and become stronger.

But he would not listen, could not be convinced or even comforted.

A couple days before Christmas, Jazz arrived with her husband, Connor, and her little boy, Davis. She was seven months pregnant with another son.

"Boy names are so hard," Jazz lamented as she helped me fix dinner one night. "I was really hoping for a girl this time. I have so many girl names I love."

"Oh, but boys are such a joy." I smiled, my thoughts immediately turning to my own son who I knew was out in the living room with the other men in our family.

"Yeah, I know you think that." Jazz chuckled. "Danny was always your favorite."

Was it that obvious? "That's not true. I love both of you equally."

"I'm just teasing." Jazz looked down at her belly with a sigh. "Still, boy names are too hard. It took forever to think of 'Davis.'"

"Do you have any ideas at all?"

"Connor does. One of them is 'Winston.' Can you imagine a more pretentious name?" Jazz smirked, rolled her eyes, ran her hands over her baby bump. "Was it hard for you to decide what to name Danny?"

"Not at all. I had his name picked out a couple years before he was even born."

"Really?"

"Mmm hmm. But your father hated it."

"The name 'Daniel'? Is that why you called him 'Danny'?"

"No. He hated the name 'Danny.' I wanted his real name to be 'Danny,' but your father was avidly against it."

Jazz seemed amused as she crossed her arms and leaned against a counter. "I didn't know that."

I pulled out my phone and made a quick search. "You want to know why I chose the name 'Danny'?"

I began playing Tiffany's "Danny" for her. Jazz broke into a wide smile as she listened. "You kidding? That's adorable! Does Danny know?" She called for Danny to come into the kitchen.

"What's up?" asked Danny. He was trying to sound cheerful. Jazz did not yet know about Sam breaking up with him, and due to her tendency to overanalyze a situation and give him unwanted advice, he had made it clear to me that he didn't want her to know just yet.

"Have you heard this?" Jazz took my phone and showed him the cover image for the song.

"Should I have?" he asked, reading the song title.

"You know that this is why Mom named you 'Danny,' right?" Jazz started the song over. "It's super eighties and super poppy, but it's so cute." She ruffled his hair. "Just like you."

Danny shrugged her off with a grin and an eye roll. He then listened to the song, and it didn't take long for his smile to disappear.

I realized the mistake too late. Despite the sugary melody, the lyrics were anguished, a girl pleading with a boy named Danny to reconsider, a girl telling a boy named Danny that he was hurting her.

If we don't stop now, we're gonna lose. We should try somehow 'cause it's too easy to bruise.

When you take your mark, Danny, with your aim, Danny, for my heart, it's only pain.

When the chorus began to use his name directly, I could see him breaking.

"Ah, well, it's just a silly song." I took my phone back from Jazz and stopped the music. "But I loved the name so much that I had to use it."

I fondly put a hand on Danny's shoulder in an attempt to make him smile somehow.

But he didn't smile, simply left the kitchen in disturbed silence.

I went back to cooking and tried to engage Jazz in a new conversation, hoping that she would not pry about Danny's obvious dark mood.

But Jazz could never just let something like that go, especially not when it concerned her little brother.

"What's going on with Danny?" she asked me in a low whisper.

I shrugged. "He's fine. Don't worry about it."

"Well, isn't this familiar?" said Jazz with an amused tone. "I remember giving you that same response, oh, nearly six years ago? I remember it being the end of my senior year."

I knew exactly what she was talking about.

"When you were worried about Danny, before you knew his secret."

"Jazz—"

"And so now you're trying to protect another secret of his from me, am I right?"

"He'll tell you when he's ready," I finally said. "But if you really want to know, he might tell you now if you ask."

Jazz nodded and left the room. I watched her go with a sigh. She takes after me in more ways than I'm sure she'd ever want to admit now, never one to just be okay with not knowing. She had to investigate, had to inquire, had to figure, had to discover.

Further, we both cared about Danny very deeply, and we could never just let him have his secrets.

I have no idea what was said in the conversation between Danny and Jazz, but I do know that it ended with Jazz knowing about Sam breaking up with Danny and the intense hurt he was experiencing because of it. And now with no reason to hide it, he didn't even try. But I wouldn't say he was moody or sullen. He wouldn't snap at any of us, wouldn't get overly defensive about anything. He did anything and everything I asked of him, chores or errands or tasks. He would be with us if I asked him to be. He would eat if I fixed something for him.

He was just sad. The purest depression. Nothing but the deepest grief.

He smiled for pictures. He smiled if I smiled at him. He laughed if others laughed first.

But he never initiated conversation. He never did anything unless he was asked to or unless someone else was already doing it, too. He never even said "hello" or "good morning" until someone said it to him first.

This was far worse than what I had seen from him back in high school, back in his sophomore year before I had any idea that he was struggling with something that no one on this planet had ever struggled with before.

Christmas morning was lovely and full of snow, and I remember how cute he looked in the new coat and hat I had bought him. And I remember how even though he smiled in every single picture and video we took, his eyes were looking straight through the lens at something that only he could see.

Jazz and her family left a couple days after Christmas so that Connor could return to work. Danny did not have to return for college for another week and a half. I was sure that by then he'd okay. Perhaps not completely healed, but he'd at least be well enough to return to his studies and start trying to recover from this horrific wound.

I tried talking to him any time I could get him to open up to me.

"How was today for you?" I often asked him.

And he would either stay silent or answer. His answers would vary.

"Okay."

"A little better."

"Not so good."

"Really bad."

On New Year's Eve, he made plans to go out with Tucker. I was hopeful that he would have a good night, that his close friend Tucker would be able to help him out. I stopped him right before he was about to leave and asked him the routine question.

He was right before the door, dressed nicely, showered and shaved, smelling of the new cologne I had bought him. He didn't look at me, didn't answer. I thought it would be one of his silent responses and wished him a happy and safe night.

But then he started crying. For a moment, I had no idea what to do. I hadn't seen him cry in years, not since I had him alone in my basement lab the day after I discovered he was half-ghost, and that had been nothing like this.

He collapsed to the floor and started sobbing uncontrollably. I knelt beside him, wrapped my arms around him. It wasn't long until I was crying, too.

We were on the floor against the front door for a long time. Danny's sobbing seemed endless. His face was completely drenched, his body completely crumpled.

Jack appeared and stood over us with a perplexed and uncomfortable frown. "What's going on?" he asked tentatively.

I soundlessly shooed him away. Jack was quick to leave as he disappeared into our basement lab.

Perhaps Jack's presence finally brought Danny back to some semblance of reality. He tried to speak through heaving gasps, but he could form nothing coherent, just clipped words and sounds that made no sense on their own. "I can't—I have to—stop—I—all this—I want to—I don't want to—I need to—all of it—these—"

I shushed him and pulled him up, let him lean on me as I led him upstairs where I helped him onto his bed. Still fully dressed, I pulled a blanket over him, smoothed back his hair and kissed him good night. He was still crying as I turned off his light and closed his door behind me.

Tucker rang our doorbell not too long after that.

"Is Danny here?" he asked when I answered. "We're supposed to go out tonight, but he's really late, so I just figured I'd come pick him up directly."

He playfully grinned, completely unaware that Danny was sobbing in bed.

I shook my head. "Sorry, but he can't tonight. He's not feeling well."

Tucker's grin disappeared. "Really? Does he need anything?"

"I'm taking care of him. Don't worry."

He frowned, blinked, looked away before returning his gaze to me. "Okay, well, tell him to call me, okay?"

"Of course." I closed the door and locked it.

…

"The last time I saw Danny was the day Sam broke up with him," said Tucker from the witness stand. "That night, actually."

"What was the date of that event?" asked the prosecutor.

"December sixteenth, twenty-eleven."

I could hear Sam crying, and I remember thinking just how much I hated her for daring to cry when this was all her god damn fault.

More questions. I don't remember them all leading up to another of Tucker's statements.

"New Year's Eve, Danny and I were supposed to hit up this party. We had tickets and everything. But he never showed up at the bar we were meeting at, so I decided to go to his house to see what was holding him up. The Fenton house. But his mother—Maddie—answered the door and informed me he wasn't well, that he wouldn't be coming out that night after all."

He wasn't well. Not at all. And he would never get better.

"After that, I could never get in touch with him again. He wouldn't answer his phone, wouldn't log into his social media accounts. The couple times I went to the Fenton household, his mother was there to tell me that Danny was not available."

I knew how they were trying to make it look. But I swear that it was Danny's own choice to cut himself off. I had nothing to do with that.

"I wish I had known that one night was going to be my last with him." Tucker put a hand over his mouth and was suddenly crying, too. "I wish that I had tried harder to see him again."

My defense objected. The jury was asked to disregard this last statement. But we all heard it.

It wouldn't have changed the end. Fate was far too eager to claim Danny. We could've changed the paths and broken the links, but all the alternate paths were headed to the same destination, and the links of his chains were quick to be forged again.


	18. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.

"Do you know Madeline Fenton?" asked the prosecutor.

"Yes," replied Sam coolly from the witness stand.

"Is she sitting in this courtroom?"

"Yes."

"Can you point her out?"

"She's sitting over there at the end of the table. Short red hair, kind of greying a little, dark blue shirt."

I didn't look at her, but I could definitely feel her staring at me.

The way she talked about Danny was glowing. She certainly loved him. But so what? Everyone who got to know him loved him. She was nothing special aside from ruining his life in not just one but two ways. If she just hadn't broken up with him, if she just hadn't pushed him to investigate our ghost portal. Oh, yes, if anyone was responsible for Danny having to end so early, it was her.

But none of us mentioned that Danny was half-ghost. We all came to our independent decisions to keep that secret. Who would believe it anyway? He was in human form when the autopsy was performed, and any ghostly abnormalities were pinned on me and my lust for experimenting on him.

"I would say that she always had a weird obsession with him," said Sam in response to some question that I don't remember. "She was quick to seek him out in a crowd before anyone else, before even her own daughter. I remember a school assembly that she and her husband came to, and she walked in and called out to Danny very loudly and very shrilly. 'Hi, sweetie!' Just like that. And her daughter Jazz was sitting right behind him, but Maddie said absolutely nothing to her, just moved on. I doubt she even looked for Jazz."

Of course I didn't look for Jazz. Jazz was fine and could take care of herself. It was Danny who actually needed me.

"Objection. Speculation."

Yes, Sam. You're only supposed to attest to what you've personally seen and heard. So why not tell them the truth about why you broke up with my son, the same reason I had to finally end him?

Because he was being possessed more and more with each passing day.

…

It was almost time for Danny to make his return flight to Stonepoint so that he could resume his college studies. But ever since New Year's Eve, he had confined himself to his room, and I couldn't get him to come out or even talk.

"Maddie, what are we going to do about this?" asked Jack as we ate dinner together in the kitchen one evening. "Do we need to get him help?"

"I've tried suggesting it, but I can't get him to leave his room."

"We could have a therapist come here."

"He won't even talk to  _me_."

"Maybe he just needs someone outside of the family." Jack looked up at the ceiling, as if he could see through it to where Danny was lying on his bed. "This seems really extreme, and it doesn't look like he's going to come out of it on his own. At the very least, I think when he returns for school that we should set him up with someone. We should do some research, look for a good licensed therapist, maybe even a psychiatrist who can prescribe something for him."

I nodded in silent agreement. Danny definitely needed help, something more professional than what I could offer him.

The day before he was supposed to leave, I entered his room and tried to get him out of bed.

"Sweetie, your flight's tomorrow. You need to pack up your things." I started for him, pulled out his suitcases and started throwing things in them.

He didn't move. I worked silently.

But at last, he sat up, his complexion almost translucent. "I can't go back."

I turned to him.

"I can't go back," he said again. He looked at me seriously with vacant eyes. "Sam's there. I can't do it."

I sat on the bed beside him. "Sweetie, you have one more semester. Don't you want to finish?"

He shook his head. "I can't. Not when she'll be so close but I'll be unable to hold her or touch her or just be with her." He bent over and put his head in his hands. "I can't. Please don't make me."

What would any other parent have done? What would any loving mother have said upon seeing her child in so much pain?

Jack was completely against it. After I told him Danny's request and how I wanted to let him stay with us until he felt well enough to return, he stormed into Danny's room.

"Danny, this is enough."

Jack's voice was loud and authoritative. Danny was immediately brought to attention. He stared at Jack raptly.

"I know you're sad. I know you don't want to go back to Stonepoint because Sam is there. But everyone goes through heartache. You're not the only one who's gone through a break-up. We all have to just get through it, and so do you. You can't just mope here forever."

Neither Danny nor I had ever seen Jack this upset.

"You're going to get on that plane tomorrow. You're going to return to school. I didn't pay thousands of dollars for your tuition and books and rent and plane tickets just for you to quit now."

"I'm not quitting," insisted Danny.

"What do you call refusing to go back for your last semester?"

"I'll finish. I promise. I just can't right now."

"It's been nearly three weeks, Danny. You have to start moving on. And yes, it's painful, but if you don't even try, you'll never get better."

"Dad, you don't understand—"

"Oh, I don't understand? Because I'm old? Because I'm just always so happy and upbeat? You think I've never experienced heartbreak, that I can't possibly know what real pain feels like?"

"I didn't say that."

"Do you think you're special, Danny? Do you think that what you're going through is unique to just you? That no one else, certainly not your father, could ever possibly understand your pain?"

Danny had nothing to say to that, but I could see him tensing. I knew the sight well from when I used to fight ghosts with him, the look he got when he was trying to fight off his ghostly obsession.

"Oh, woe is you. Poor Danny. All alone, no one for him to turn to, certainly not a loving father who has provided for him his entire life and continues to do so even now. He must suffer alone because he is different from everyone else, has such terrible troubles, such a terrible, terrible life."

Danny's hands clenched into tight fists. His teeth gritted behind his pursed lips. Veins protruded in his arms, and I could practically see a concentration of ectoplasm pumping through them.

But when his eyes flashed with emerald light, that's when I felt afraid. Jack was bigger than Danny, but Danny was far more muscular and had far more fighting experience of which Jack still had no idea. Danny had seen and been up against things that Jack could never imagine.

There was no doubt in my mind that Danny could easily kill Jack.

Jack saw Danny's eyes light up, too. I could tell by the way he blinked and relaxed his jaw.

"Jack, don't you dare talk to our son that way." I shoved him in the direction of Danny's door. "Get out. Now."

Jack regained his angry glare. "Maddie, if we enable this, he'll just become one of those lazy kids who bums off of his parents and never does anything with his life."

"Get out," I screamed at him. "This isn't what he needs right now."

Jack stomped out of the room and down the stairs. I stood facing the empty doorway while I caught my breath.

When I finally turned around, Danny was staring at the floor with wide blue eyes. Every single part of him was shaking.

"Danny." I approached him and placed my hands on his shoulders.

Danny's eyes slowly moved up to meet mine. He whispered something to me, so low and so tremulous that I almost couldn't understand him.

"I'm scared."

We packed up all of his belongings and his Christmas gifts into his suitcases. The next day, his things were still in his room, but he was gone.


	19. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:

I wonder if Jack has found someone new yet, a new body to squeeze and hold and touch and love. We are still not officially divorced despite my full cooperation, but I can't imagine someone like Jack being alone for too long. He's an extrovert like me and hates being alone for an extended period of time even more than I do.

Jack had to do a lot of things without me, particularly Danny's services. I had no say in anything regarding his funeral and burial, had apparently forfeited all of my rights to that when I ended him. I only know what was done because Vlad told me.

I wonder what it was like for Jack to make all of those decisions for a child he should not have ever had to bury at all, a child who should have one day buried him instead.

"Excuse me, sir. Sorry to bother you, sir, but what would you like to be done with his body? Shall we cremate him, sir?"

And Jack had to toil and debate and agonize before he finally decided that he couldn't bring himself to destroy his child any further and so had his broken body placed in the ground as whole as it possibly could have been.

"Just leave him. Leave him. Don't hurt him anymore."

And Danny's grave? What name is on it? Daniel? But that's not his name, not really, not the name I wanted to give him, not the name I ever, ever called him.

But regardless of the name that's on his headstone, I wish I could see his final resting place with my own eyes.

…

I was supposed to take Danny to the airport, but he was not in his room. I stood by his bed and looked at the luggage that I had helped him packed just the day before. I called his cell phone but got no answer. I searched the rest of the house, but Danny was nowhere to be found.

Considering the fragile state I knew he was in, I was panicked.

"Isn't it time to take Danny to the airport?" Jack asked as he stood in the doorway of Danny's room.

I turned to him. "He's with Tucker this morning. He wanted to hang out with him one last time before he left."

"Will he be back soon?"

"I'm going to pick him up on the way to the airport." I lifted one of Danny's bags. "Can you help me put these in the car?"

I didn't want to tell Jack the truth. I didn't want him to worry. I was sure I could find Danny on my own. And, in fact, I thought it would be better if I found him on my own. I didn't think Danny should see Jack so soon again after their interaction the day before.

Jack helped me load up the car, but I stopped him before he could get in the car himself.

"I think it's better if I just take him," I said.

Jack's face fell. "You mean because of what happened yesterday?"

I didn't reply.

"I actually want to apologize to him," said Jack quietly with lowered eyes. "I feel bad. I shouldn't have yelled at him."

"No, you really shouldn't have."

My tone was short. Jack looked at me with a pained expression, but I had no sympathy. As far as I could tell, Danny had run off because Jack had hurt him, had made him feel like he was a terrible son.

"Please let me come with you," begged Jack. "Please let me say goodbye to him."

I shook my head. "Really, Jack, I don't think it's a good idea. Just let him be."

I climbed into the driver's seat and started the car. Jack tapped on the window. I lowered it.

"Will you at least tell him I said goodbye?"

I'm sure that if Jack knew that the day before was the last time he'd ever see his son alive, he would've tried so much harder to get in that car with me.

I drove through the whole town, looked in all the places where I thought Danny could be. But he was half-ghost. He could be anywhere. He could be standing right in front of me invisibly, and I would have no idea.

The hours passed. The time Danny's plane was supposed to take off came and went. I still had not found him and was not any closer to finding him.

I was desperate.

I shouldn't have done what I did. I shouldn't have asked for help.

But I figured it would take a ghost to find a ghost.

As usual, Vlad was ecstatic to see me. I looked at him with tears in my eyes.

"Maddie, what's wrong?" Vlad asked with what sounded like sincere concern.

"Danny's gone," I told him. "I think he's run away."

Vlad frowned. "He's run away? What do you mean? He's an adult now. Isn't he living on his own?"

"He was visiting for Christmas. But he disappeared this morning." I tried to explain more, but the words were stuck in my choked throat. "Vlad, please, help me find him. Please."

Vlad didn't need any further encouragement. He acted swiftly, made some calls, sent out messages. He directed me to a sofa in his office and soothingly assured me that he'd take care of it, that I should sit and try to calm down.

More hours passed. Vlad came in and out of the office to check on me and give me updates. But still no Danny. I blubbered and sobbed and cried, cried, cried for a long time. My body was exhausted and drained. I remember falling over on the sofa and crying like that for some time, and then Vlad was shaking me awake. I blinked and rubbed my puffy, swollen eyes. The sky outside Vlad's office window was dark.

"How are you feeling?" Vlad was kneeling on the floor beside me, his hands clasped around mine. He lifted one to brush matted hair off of my forehead.

I sniffled. "Did you find him?"

Vlad smiled and looked at me with soft blue eyes. "Yes. I did."

I straightened up, fully alert. "Really? Where is he? Is he here?" I stood and looked around wildly.

Vlad gently pushed me back onto the sofa. "He's not here. But he's okay. Don't worry."

I scowled. "Vlad, just tell me where he is."

"He's in the next state over, in Pearltown. He's in one of my vacation homes. Very private."

"What is he doing in Pearltown? Did he know you had a house out there?"

"No. I directed him there when I found him." Vlad put a hand on my shoulder. "I figured he needed a place to stay for a while. He looked awful."

"Awful? What do you mean? You said he's okay."

"He's not hurt. But he looked disheveled and emotionally unwell."

"So you actually saw him in person?"

"I did indeed. He refused to accompany me back to Amity Park, so I offered a compromise and allowed him to stay in my house there until he recovers from whatever has been ailing him." His volume lowered. "I know he's a ghost, but I've never seen him look so possessed and haunted." He gazed at me. "What happened to him?"

I recalled Danny sobbing uncontrollably on the floor, locked away in his room for days, the fear that passed over his face when he realized just how close he had come to harming his father.

Fate was relentlessly pursuing my son.

"It's none of your business," I told Vlad.

Vlad's eyes narrowed in mild offense. "I just spent my entire afternoon and evening locating him and then getting him to a safe place, and you're going to tell me it's none of my business?"

I met his expression with a glare. "This doesn't make up for what you did to him in the past, Vlad." I stood, and turned away from him. I could feel his eyes on me. "But thank you for finding him," I said quietly.

Vlad made no reply.

"Can you give me an address? I want to see him right away."

"Of course," said Vlad. "But I could just take you there myself."

"No. I'd rather see him alone."

"But Pearltown is twelve hours away. You can't drive all night alone."

"I got some sleep. I'll be fine."

"But, I mean…" Vlad paused. "I could fly you there, you know. It'd be much faster."

I looked back at him, perplexed that he would even make such an offer. But his expression was entirely serious, and from the way he looked at me, it was clear he still had strong feelings for me.

"That's not a good idea, and you know it," I told him simply. "Now give me the address."

When I got into my car to set out, I checked my phone and saw that I had several missed calls and worried texts from Jack. I was anxious to get going, but I knew I needed to give Jack a convincing excuse for my absence first.

"Maddie, thank God. Where have you been? Where are you now?" came Jack's frenzied voice.

"Sorry, Jack. I was talking to an old girlfriend, and I lost track of time."

"Are you on your way home now? Did you drop Danny off? He hasn't been replying to my messages."

"Danny's fine," I said tersely. "I actually need to go out of town for a while. The girlfriend I told you about needs some help. I want to be there for her."

"Wait, what? Ah, okay. When will you be leaving?"

"Tonight. Right now."

"Right now?" Jack gasped in baffled shock.

"Yes. I don't know when I'll be back, but you can take care of the house for me, can't you?"

"Maddie, can we talk about this? You're going to come back to pack some things, right?"

"No. She has everything I need. I'll be fine."

"Maddie, please, I want to talk more about this. Can't you please come back and tell me the plan face to face?"

"Jack, I really need to go now. I can't waste any time. She needs me now."

"But who is she? Where are you going? I want to know where you're going to be."

"I'll send you all the details in a text, okay? I really need to leave."

Jack didn't say anything. He knew full well that when my mind was set, there was no changing it.

"I love you," I finally said.

"I love you, too," said Jack quietly. "Please be safe. And please tell me more when you can."

I took off into the night. I had to reach him first, had to take him into my arms before fate beat me to him.


	20. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·

If my death could've somehow ended his neurosis and healed his mind, I would've put that gun to my own head instead.

But there was no other way to fix his head. It just had to be stopped.

…

The address Vlad gave me took me into the middle of nowhere. I was at first wary as I started driving down small winding roads surrounded by thickening foliage. I wondered if this was a trap Vlad had set up for me, if he had not found Danny at all and was just getting me lost so he could either "rescue" me or capture me. Or perhaps he had found Danny but was keeping him hostage and would offer his release if I would just be his lover.

A number of other paranoid scenarios entered my head, all of them depicting Vlad as a diabolical villain I should've never trusted.

But eventually, in the early afternoon, I came across a large forest retreat in complete isolation, surrounded by nothing but trees, no neighbors or anyone at all for miles. I parked in front of the house and stared up at it. It was certainly impressive, not too surprising considering it belonged to Vlad.

I knocked on the front door a couple times, rang the doorbell. No answer. I entered the code Vlad had given me into the electronic lock and pushed the door open. "Danny?" I called out into the darkened entry. Still no answer.

I flipped on a light and marveled at the extravagance of the décor. Vlad certainly liked to flaunt his wealth. But there was only one precious sight I cared to see.

I searched the house, all the while calling out Danny's name, but there was still no response and still no sign of him. I started to panic, wondering if he had run off again.

Or perhaps he was never here and Vlad was just trying to trap me here.

But in a bedroom upstairs, my heart nearly stopped when I saw him at last. Lying on a large king-sized bed, I could tell he wasn't sleeping even though he made no movement and kept his eyes closed as I approached him.

"Danny?" I asked hesitantly. I sat on the bed beside him but did not touch him.

Danny let out a loud sigh and opened his eyes. "I knew I couldn't trust Vlad not to tell you."

This hurt me, but I tried not to show it. "I'm the one who asked him to find you," I told him softly.

"I didn't want to be found."

"Danny, why did you run off?"

"Because you were going to make me go back to Stonepoint where Sam is." Danny sat up on the bed and pulled in his knees. "And I'm  _not_  going back there. I can't handle it."

"Okay, Danny, okay." I moved closer to him and slowly reached out my hand, testing to see if he'd let me touch him. When he didn't lean away from me, I made contact with his shoulder and gently squeezed it. "I'll talk to your father, okay? I'll make him understand, and then you can stay with us until you feel better."

"No."

I faltered. "What?"

"I'm not going to stay with you."

"Danny, I promise I can make Dad understand—"

"It's not about that."

He rested his arms on his knees and looked down. I could see his eyes tearing up.

"I need to be alone. I need to be away from everyone."

He sounded so dark and faraway. I pulled myself up on the bed so that I could put my arm around him. "Danny, why are you saying this? What's going on?"

Danny was silent, his tears falling on his arms.

"Danny, please tell me." I started crying as well, remembering that night not too long ago on New Year's Eve when I held him while he sobbed in my arms.

"My obsession. It's getting worse," he choked out. "I can feel it. It's taking over me."

I turned cold, the fear in his voice striking into me.

"I thought things would be okay as long as I had Sam. She made me so happy. We had problems, sure, but I just always felt so happy with her." He buried his head in his arms, his words muffled but still comprehensible. "And I thought she was happy with me, too."

I could practically hear his heart breaking even more as he spoke.

"But when she broke up with me…the way I felt…" Danny lifted his head and raised his hand as he were studying it. "I remember feeling something like it when I…when I beat up Dash. I didn't really feel like me or like I was really present, as if something was possessing me. And all I could think about was how I wanted to make the bad feeling go away. And I kept thinking about all the ways I could possibly get her back, any and every way I could possibly make her change her mind."

"That's really not unusual, Danny," I tried telling him. "Many people feel that way after a break-up."

"Do people normally want to confront and threaten the one who broke up with them? Do they consider torturing her family until she agrees to take him back? Do they imagine locking her away and keeping her all to himself so that she can never leave him again?"

I could not reply, my words completely lost to me. He looked at me with misted, sullen eyes.

"Because that's what I've thought about doing to her. And with my ghost powers, it would only be too easy for me to do."

I still could not say anything, my throat paralyzed by my shock. How could such words possibly come from my sweet boy?

"I know it's terrible." Danny looked away in shame. "I know it. It would be the most awful thing to do, and I've made sure not to transform this whole time because I worry that if I'm in my ghost form that I won't be able to resist those compulsions." He shuddered. "But the compulsions are so strong even like this."

I pulled him in closer to me.

"That's why I can't go back to where she is," he said in a hoarse voice. "I'm afraid of what I'll do to her. And what I almost did to  _Dad_. When he said all that to me, when he…" He let out an exasperated gasp. "I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to silence him. I wanted to…" He didn't finish his sentence, just shut his eyes tightly.

"Danny—"

"I'm worried—I'm afraid—I feel like I'm losing control, like I'm losing my  _mind_. I feel like I'm…becoming…" He breathed deeply. "Him."

I knew who he was talking about. I had seen him in Clockwork's looking-glass.

"My dark persona. The dark ghost I defeated but still haunts me whenever I feel pain. He eliminates his pain no matter what, no matter who else he hurts in the process. It doesn't matter to him as long as his pain is gone." He paused to cry for a moment. "I feel like the only thing separating me from being him is that I still have a conscience. I still experience guilt and shame, so hurting others creates even more pain for me. But there are times when my conscience isn't strong enough to hold me back, like when I beat up Dash or when I wanted to hurt Dad. I feel like it's shrinking and getting harder to listen to."

"But you  _didn't_  hurt Dad," I reminded him.

"That time," he said darkly, "but what about next time? Or what about someone else who doesn't mean as much to me? Random people or just casual friends?"

"Don't talk like that, Danny."

"I can't be around anyone anymore," said Danny firmly. "I can't be close to anyone ever again. It's just too painful for me when they hurt me. I have to separate myself from anyone and anything that might hurt me so that I don't end up hurting them."

"No, Danny." I turned him and forced him to look at me. "Danny, you can't do that to yourself. I won't let you."

Danny narrowed his eyes at me. I swallowed my unease and held my stare.

"You can't stop me from doing this. I can get far, far away, so much farther than this, and I can make sure you never find me."

I studied his face with grave concern and growing fear. I had never heard him talk this way to me before.

"I can't let Phantom take over me. I have to cut off all sources of pain and hurt if I'm going to keep my ghostly obsession under control."

_I will tell you that the chance of him escaping his fate is very low._

Clockwork's ominous words.

_The paths leading to it far outnumber the paths that don't._

Was this a path that would not lead to it? It seemed so dismal and lonely, not the path I wanted my son to be on.

But Danny was right. There was no way I could stop him from isolating himself. He was so much stronger than me, so much faster, so much more powerful.

So I did the best thing I could do to at least keep him in my sight.

"Okay, Danny. If this is really what you think you need right now, then I'll help you however I can." I hugged him close. "But please promise you'll stay here, then. Please don't run off again. And please don't cut yourself off from  _me_ , at the very least."

"Mom, I'm not sure I should have contact with you either, honestly."

"Danny, don't do this to me, please. I don't want to lose you. I can help you, and I won't tell anyone where you are, not even Dad, okay? You can just rest here until you feel well enough to go back out."

Danny didn't say anything for a long time, just stayed silent in my embrace as I cried over him.

"Okay," he finally whispered.

Later, long after the sun had set, Vlad arrived at the house. I met him downstairs.

"How is he?" asked Vlad earnestly.

"He's sleeping," I told him. "What are you doing here?"

Vlad frowned at my irritated tone. "Well, this  _is_  my house."

I glared at him for a moment, then sighed and sat on a sofa. "Thank you, Vlad, for letting him stay here. Really."

Vlad took a seat across from me in a large chair. "He can stay as long as he needs to." He paused and blushed slightly while looking at me. "You can, too, if you'd like."

I couldn't help but smile at his obvious fondness for me. "I might take you up on that for at least a few days. Just until I'm sure Danny will be okay here."

"Does Jack know you two are here?"

"No. And please don't tell him, okay?"

"All right. I won't." Vlad leaned toward me. "But can you please tell me what's going on? Why don't you want Jack to know? And why is Daniel so distraught?"

"Danny," I corrected him. "His name is Danny."

Vlad blinked in mild surprise at my interjection.

I proceeded to tell him all that had transpired, all that Danny had confessed to me. What other choice did I have? Vlad was graciously allowing him to stay in his house for free, and I couldn't just not tell him why Danny wanted to be so isolated.

But if only I had known I was making a deal with the devil.

…

I know that I ended him. I remember the feel of metal in my hands and the way he hit the ground and how his blue eyes stared at nothing.

But sometimes I wonder if maybe I killed myself, too. Maybe I'm also dead, and this prison is my punishment, my personal hell where I can never escape what I did to him and everyone knows what I did to him and I can never be loved or have anyone to love ever again.

And Vlad, the only one who ever visits me, is my eternal tormentor.


	21. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:

Home from kindergarten for the day. Danny had a question for me. Five years old and still so little and perfect and completely human.

"Mom, can we get a puppy?" His eyes were round and pleading.

I laughed at the idea. "A puppy?"

Danny nodded excitedly. "Yeah. I really want one."

"Sweetie, a puppy is a lot of work."

"I'll take care of it, promise!" He clasped his hands together. "And if it's a girl, I'll even name her Maddie after you."

Well, if that wasn't the most adorable thing ever. I smiled and ran my fingers through his hair. "And what if it's a boy?"

Danny scrunched up his little mouth as he thought. "Mmm…Balto!"

"Like from the movie?" Danny had watched the animated film about the heroic sled dog that helped deliver medication to children who desperately needed it several times by this point.

"Yeah, he's cool!"

I hated disappointing him, but there was no way Jack and I had the time or energy for a dog, plus we had far too much expensive equipment that a dog could easily ruin or break.

And Danny, being the sweetheart he was, understood and did not whine or cry about it. He wasn't angry or upset at all, just very sad. I took him to the nearest Humane Society center to play with and walk some of the dogs there, and I remember just how happy he was to be there and how sad he was to leave.

I sure did like seeing him so happy.

…

Those first few days I stayed with Danny at Vlad's house, I went out and bought him whatever he needed, food and clothes and soap and books so that he'd have something to do. Well, that's what I claimed they were for, anyway. I slipped in one self-help book about letting go of a relationship and overcoming depression. It was my belief that he just needed some time, a little bit of help, and then he'd be back to his normal happy self.

I did what I could in those days. I cooked for him, watched after him, talked to him. But he was so quiet and rarely confided anything in me.

Mostly, I tried to challenge his heartbreaking decision to cut himself off from everyone.

"Danny, it's unrealistic," I told him. "You can't just be alone the rest of your life. You need friends. Your need family. I promise you'll meet another girl, a girl who won't ever leave you."

"But how long until I find her? What if I just end up going through another break-up?" Danny moaned. "I can't even do this one more time. I can't risk it happening again. Once was far too many times."

"But that's what life is, Danny. It's full of heartbreak. We all have to go through it. But we all get through it somehow."

"When are you going to understand that I am  _not_  like everyone else?" demanded Danny irritably. "Everyone else doesn't have a ghostly obsession embedded in their DNA that compels them to do anything and everything possible to eliminate their pain." He crossed his arms and shut his eyes. "I'm afraid of what I'll do if I keep hurting like this, if I ever feel like this again. I have to prevent it as best I can because…"

His voice took on a whispery tremor.

"Heartbreak for me could be a death sentence for everyone else."

I recalled all of the destruction I had seen in Clockwork's looking-glass, all of the dead bodies surrounding the menacing form of my son.

And as I looked at him in that moment, I realized that his height, his physique, and his face were indeed beginning to closely resemble the ghost I had seen in that terrible forecast.

But I didn't tell him that. Never. Clockwork had told me there was one path that was better than the others, one that did not lead Danny to becoming that monster. The ghost of time was holding out for it, and I was resolved to hold out for it, too.

I eventually had to return to Jack. I wanted to stay with Danny, but I couldn't leave Jack alone any longer, not without making him suspicious.

"Danny, promise me you'll stay here, okay? Please don't run off," I said as I prepared to leave.

"Okay," he said quietly.

There would be no way for me to contact him. He had thrown away his cell phone, had destroyed his laptop, had disconnected Vlad's house phone. He was resolved to be all alone in that house with no contact with any friends or family.

But he made an exception for me. I was determined to do whatever I could to keep that trust. I knew that if I told anyone where he was or brought anyone else to visit him, he would run away again, and I would likely never find him again.

But what to tell Jack? Jack was overjoyed to see me and asked for details as to where I had been. I made up some sob story about a girlfriend who had been struggling with mental issues and a heroin addiction and an affair with her heroin dealer and so many other horrible issues.

But what did I tell him about Danny? I told Jack that I had dropped Danny off at the airport, that he was back in school, that he was going to be just fine.

"He hasn't been answering my calls," said Jack. "In fact, it just goes straight to voicemail. I've left him messages, but he won't call me back."

"Jack, he's still going through a hard time. Just give him some time, okay?"

But the weeks stretched on, and Danny was still intent on keeping himself isolated and locked away from the world. I visited him as often as I could, telling Jack each time that I was just helping out my girlfriend.

He just didn't seem to be improving at all. Still so depressed, still feeling so hopeless.

"Jazz had her baby," I told him. "She named him Declan."

Lying on one of Vlad's sofas, he didn't even sit up. "Don't tell me that."

"But don't you want to see pictures of him?"

"No. Don't show me or tell me anything like that. Seriously."

"Why not, Danny? She's your sister."

"You know why not. Please don't make me explain again."

He was still completely convinced that he had to cut himself off from everyone that meant something to him. I had thought with time that that notion of his would change. Time was supposed to heal all wounds.

Well, time was supposed to heal  _human_  wounds, anyway.

"Are you feeling at least a little better?" I asked him.

He soundlessly shook his head.

"Danny, are you even trying to get better?" I asked him pointedly but as delicately as I could.

"What do you mean?" He sat up on his elbows and frowned at me.

I sighed and took a seat beside him. "I know that everything feels bleak for you now, like things could never possibly get better, but sweetheart, you have more control over your emotions than you think. You can get past this. You can feel happy again." I put a hand on his leg. "But you have to  _want_  to be happy again. And you have to put in some effort to feel happy again."

Danny stared at me in silence for some time.

"Of course I want to be happy again," he finally said. "But you're wrong. I don't have nearly enough control over my emotions."

"What are you talking about? Why are you saying that?"

"Because I'm not human, Mom." Danny said this tiredly, not angrily, as if he had tried explaining this to me far too many times. "I was human at one time, sure. And I'm partly human now, for sure. But not entirely. Don't you remember what makes humans different from ghosts?"

Of course I remembered. I  _knew_. I had been studying ghosts since before Danny was even born. "Ghosts are driven by obsession," I said, almost monotonously. "They cannot reason beyond the confines of their obsessions. They will do anything and everything to satisfy their obsessions."

"Right," said Danny. "And you've looked at my blood samples in my human form. You know that I have ghostly properties running through me even when I'm not transformed." He gestured to himself. "I have some control over how I handle my emotions when I'm not transformed, but there are times when I lose that control, like when I beat up Dash…and when I almost hurt Dad." He paused. "I haven't transformed at all since that time. I'm afraid of what I might do when I'm in full ghost form, a state in which my obsession is nearly impossible to control."

His words sounded somewhat strange to me, almost as if they were not his.

"Because I'm just not human." He averted his gaze. "And there's just no way to control my ghostly obsession."

"Have you been talking to Vlad?" I asked him. "Has he been coming here when I'm not here?"

Danny looked at me in mild surprise but did not say anything.

"What has Vlad been saying to you?"

"Ah…" Danny struggled to find the right words. "I mean, yes, we've been talking, but it's just…he's like me, you know? He knows what it's like to not be completely human."

"I'd rather you not talk to him," I said firmly.

"But he seems different now," said Danny thoughtfully. "I don't feel unsafe with him anymore or like he wants to use me."

"But didn't you tell me that Vlad is the reason you went berserk and dark in that alternate timeline?" I was cheating a little. From Clockwork himself, I knew that Danny could still meet his dark fate even without Vlad's help, but I was desperate to get Danny to cease such communication with Vlad or at least to not talk to him while I was gone.

Danny's eyes darkened. "That's true," he whispered.

The weeks turned into months. Danny was still showing no improvement, and he was still cut off from everyone. He spoke to no one through any electronic means. He didn't care to know what his friends were up to via their social media accounts. He wouldn't even leave the house.

It was getting close to the time that Danny was supposed to graduate. I had told Jack that Danny had been in school, and Jack was already asking about when we would be flying out for his university commencement. What to tell him? I figured I'd come up with something later. I kept it putting it off because my first priority was helping Danny. He was not getting any better. I had to do something to lift his spirits. But what?

For his twenty-second birthday, I brought a visitor with me.

"Danny," I called to him as I came through the front door of Vlad's house. "I have a birthday gift for you. Come quick."

Danny groggily came down the stairs and froze when he saw the four-legged visitor with thick grey fur and big blue eyes in my arms.

I smiled and held the puppy out to him. "Well, don't just stand there! Don't you want to hold him?"

Danny took the puppy in his arms. The puppy happily licked his face, and Danny broke out in the biggest and most adorable smile.

"He's all yours," I told him.

Danny looked at me, as if checking to see if I was serious. "You got me a dog?" he asked in astonishment.

"Yes. I mean, if you want him."

Danny stroked the puppy's head. "Of course I want him. I absolutely want him." He threw a free arm around me. "Oh, my God, thank you so much."

"I have some food and toys for him in my car if you want to help me get them."

"Of course. Of course I'll help you get them. Oh, my God, thank you." Danny cuddled the puppy against his face and hummed to himself.

I teared as I watched him. To see him so happy again, his handsome face so lit with joy, was the most heartwarming sight.

"It's a boy, you know," I told him. "Do you remember what name you said you would use if you ever got a male dog?"

Danny laughed. "I do remember, actually." He scratched behind the puppy's ears affectionately. "Balto it is."

Danny loved that dog. Balto instantly bonded with him, and they would play and run and even sleep together.

And it seemed that Danny was finally starting to improve. He even started talking about returning to school and graduating at the end of the summer instead of spring like he was originally going to. I could make that work. I could explain that to Jack. Everything would work out.

Everything was supposed to work out.

Why couldn't it have worked out?


	22. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.

A letter:  _What you did to him was absolutely terrible and disgusting and horrifying._

Yes, but still nothing compared to what he might've done to you.

…

Danny's mood improved dramatically once he finally got the puppy he had wanted since he was a child. He would play with Balto in the backyard for hours, racing through the trees or throwing sticks that Balto would fetch. And other times, they would just nap together, a small smile on Danny's face as his hand rested on Balto's furry head.

It warmed my heart to see him happy again. His joy over this dog was just so adorable and endearing.

I was sure that Danny would be returning to school soon.

"So…Danny's not going to be graduating this semester?" Jack furrowed his brow.

"Right," I explained as we worked together in our lab on a new invention. "He's missing a couple credits, so he needs another semester. He'll take them over the summer."

"But how is that possible? Hasn't he been meeting with an advisor? How is he missing anything?"

"It happens, Jack," I said as nonchalantly as I could. "It's fine. Don't make him feel bad about this. He's still crushed over Sam, you know."

"I couldn't possibly make him feel bad about anything because he's still refusing to talk to me," grumbled Jack. "Seriously, I can't get ahold of him. He won't even answer my e-mails." He turned to me. "But he's talking to you?"

"Of course. I'm his mother."

Jack looked somewhat crestfallen, hurt even. "Can you please tell him that his father would like to talk to him sometimes, too?"

"I'll tell him."

And I did tell Danny. I absolutely did. But even though he was happier, his face would always fall slightly when I tried to bring up the subject of family.

"I can't talk to him," was his reply.

"Danny, what am I supposed to keep telling him? And Jazz? She's been trying to get in touch with you, too. As I'm sure your friends are."

"I know, I know." Danny groaned and shut his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. "Please just help me with this, Mom. I can't talk to any of them right now."

I gave in. What else could I do? I didn't want to upset him or make him run off again, so I let him have his way.

I tried bringing up school as well. I had already told Jack that Danny would be graduating at the end of summer instead, so we needed to get him registered if that was the plan.

I brought it up to him while he was playing with Balto on Vlad's living room floor.

"Danny, do you think you'll be able to return to school? I can set up your class roster for you."

He didn't look at me. Balto continued to tug on the toy in Danny's hand. He held the toy firmly but was no longer smiling.

"You had mentioned graduating at the end of summer," I reminded him. "The summer semester will be starting soon."

"I don't think I should," he said in a low voice.

So many weeks and months of this now. I was getting tired and more and more frustrated and heartbroken.

"Too many people," he murmured. "Too many ways for me to be hurt. Too many people I could potentially hurt as a result."

How could he possibly still be thinking this way? Why was this ridiculous notion of his still so stuck in his head?

His ghostly compulsion. He was compelled to do whatever he could to keep his pain away, even if it meant isolating himself.

But perhaps someone else had a hand in the persistence of this dark thought in Danny's head.

Vlad would often visit when he knew that I would be coming out for a weekend to see Danny. One afternoon, he and I sat together on the front porch of his house while Danny ran and played with Balto in the yard. At least he was getting some exercise and sunlight even in this isolation he had imposed on himself.

"He seems to be doing better," remarked Vlad. "He sure has been smiling more often since you got him that dog."

"Yes," I agreed. "He's been improving. He's even mentioned returning to school."

"Oh?"

"Yes. But he's still hesitant right now. I'm hoping that as he continues to improve that maybe he'll find the courage to rejoin the world."

"Well, he's welcome to stay here as long as he'd like. It's no problem to me."

"Thanks, Vlad. That's really kind of you."

We watched Danny for a few moments in silence. Shouting commands, throwing balls, rolling onto the grass as he tackled Balto.

"He looks a lot like you," observed Vlad. "Good-looking kid."

Vlad was gazing at Danny with a contemplative smile.

"Vlad, don't look at my son like that," I reprimanded him.

Vlad turned to me in baffled shock, his face turning red. "What—why—what do you take me for, some kind of deviant?"

"You did want to create a clone of him."

Vlad gritted his teeth, rolled his eyes. "And what on Earth are you suggesting I wanted a clone of him for?"

"I really don't want to know."

Vlad scoffed and crossed his arms in appalled irritation.

"I do appreciate all you've done for us, Vlad. Really." I looked at him seriously. "But this still can't possibly make up for what you did to him in the past."

Vlad made no reply.

"And I'm still wary of your relationship with him." I recalled my conversations with Danny, all of the excuses he kept making for confining himself here. I was sure that Vlad was somehow perpetuating those destructive thoughts. "He says you visit him sometimes even when I'm not here. Is that true?"

Vlad did not speak right away. "I just like to check up on him. Same as you."

"What do you two talk about?"

"Whatever he wants to talk about."

He was being avoidant. I didn't want to start an argument, not with Danny in earshot.

"Vlad, I don't want you visiting Danny alone ever again," I told him firmly. "Don't be coming here unless I'm here."

Vlad huffed. "But I own this house."

"Vlad," I said sharply.

Vlad grumbled reluctant agreement.

And Danny continued to merrily play with his dog.

…

"I can't kill myself. Phantom won't let me."

I can't kill you either, Danny, Danny, Danny. Please don't make me. Why are you making me?

…

Prison. A visitor. Vlad uses his ghostly puppets to force the guards to take me to him.

Vlad sits on the other side of the glass with a friendly smile. "Hello, my dear."

I say nothing to him.

Vlad's smile disappears. He leans forward. "Maddie, we need to talk."

I huff. "We haven't talked before?"

Vlad looks at me gravely. "I know you've been having a hard time. I know that your therapist has linked your recent illness with my visits."

"And yet you keep visiting me. Do you want me to feel sick, Vlad?"

Vlad shakes his head. "Never. I don't want you to feel bad, my dear. It pains me deeply that you feel so bad."

"Then why do you keep doing this to me?" I start crying. "Why did you do any of this to me? Why did you do any of that to him?" I choke on a sob. "Why did you hurt my son, Vlad?"

"Maddie—"

"I know it was you. I know you told him he had no control over his ghostly obsession. I know you told him that his only chance was to keep himself away from anything that could hurt him." I draw in a breath. "And I know you killed his dog."

Vlad makes no reply.

"Why, Vlad?" I cry. "Why did you do that to him?"

"I did what had to be done," Vlad says under his breath, just barely loud enough for me to hear as he looks at the floor. "It was the only path. I had to ensure the only path. The most perfect path."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Vlad raises his eyes which are now shining with tears.

And I feel far too sick now to write what happens next. I have to sleep and find Danny somewhere in my dreams and sob against his illusionary shoulder while he holds me and curiously asks what I could possibly be crying about.


	23. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:

Vlad's house. Isolated and hidden in a forest of thick trees. I was there for another weekend, a weekend alone with my Danny.

I had already told Jack that Danny still could not graduate just yet, that he'd have to wait until December because one of the classes he needed was not offered in the summer. Jack was growing increasingly concerned, but with no way to contact Danny himself, he could only grumble and ask me to please tell him to hurry and stop wasting his father's money on more tuition. And then he apologized and begged me to not tell Danny that, please, don't tell Danny that he had said such a thing because his son could never be a waste or drain on him and he was just worried and missed talking to him and why oh why wouldn't he talk to his own father? Didn't he know by now how sorry he was for yelling at him?

Danny was well aware that Jack was sorry for yelling at him and had long forgiven him. But Danny was even sorrier for all of the things he had wanted to do to his father in that moment. And so he continued to punish himself for it by locking himself away.

But I would be lying if I told you that I didn't enjoy our time alone in that house together. Perhaps that's the real reason I never fought too hard with him about going back to school.

A muggy August night. I was dozing in my own bed down the hall from him when I heard a commotion outside my room. I drowsily sat up and listened some more to the sound of stumbling and movement racing outside my door.

I immediately got up just in time to see Danny and Balto peering out the open front door.

"Danny? What's going on?"

"My ghost sense," he murmured quietly as he looked out into the warm night, his breath frosting as he spoke.

I joined him at the door with a frown. We had never seen ghosts out here before. In fact, it had been a long time since I had seen him in ghost form at all, not since he went on a couple ghost patrols at the beginning of his previous winter break.

And I would be lying if I told you that I wasn't longing to see Danny Phantom again in all his icy-haired shiny-eyed magnificence.

He cautiously exited the house with Balto right at his heels. He circled around in an attempt to locate whatever was making him shiver.

I started walking outside as well.

"No, Mom, just wait there," he commanded tensely.

"Danny, I'm an experienced ghost hunter, too, you know."

"I know, but please just let me look around first."

I held back a smile as I remained on the porch. His insistent chivalry was actually quite sweet. Cute, even.

Balto began to growl at something. Danny took immediate note and looked in the direction in which Balto was snarling.

With howling dissonance, a swarm of ghosts charged at him. Danny swiftly jumped out of the way and transformed. I could feel blood rushing to my face as I leaned over the porch railing to get a good look at him. His eyes sparkled with serious focus, his teeth gritted with determined fight.

My handsome soldier of a son.

"Mom, find something to trap these ghosts in," Danny yelled at me as he fought off the numerous ghosts. Balto barked and ran around hysterically, snapping his jaws at the spectral entities.

I promptly ran inside to Vlad's basement lab because of course he had one even in this house out in the middle of nowhere. I had brought a few ghostly combat items of my own, but I only had one Thermos since I had not anticipated ever seeing ghosts clear out here, let alone several of them at once. But Vlad thankfully had a number of his own items. I grabbed what I could including a gun and rejoined Danny outside.

We made just as good a team as always, blasting and sealing the ghosts away until there were none left. When the final ghost was gone, Danny and I locked gazes, both of us panting.

"Well, I have to say, Danny, I'm surprised."

He creased his brow.

"You didn't make a single witty joke."

He broke into a smile and laughed. "Well, it has been, what, eight months since I last fought any ghosts."

"So you're saying you're out of practice?" I teased him.

"Maybe a little."

"Well, you sure looked like you knew what you were doing." I approached him and ran a hand through his ghostly hair. I had missed just how peculiarly lovely his hair felt when he was transformed.

His smile became wistful. "There was actually a time when ghost-fighting was kind of fun and thrilling for me, you know. It gave me a purpose, made me feel like I was actually doing some good for the world and not just wasting space."

"You were never wasting space, Danny," I assured him. "You've always brought me so much joy. And so much joy to others. Do you have any idea how many people love you?"

He didn't reply.

"And they all miss you so much." I caressed his face. "They want to see you again."

He stayed silent, his eyes down to the ground. I wrapped my arms around him and held him close. He changed back into his human form but quietly remained in my embrace for a while.

The night air was so quiet, so still.

Too quiet, too still.

Danny gently pulled away from me and looked around. "Did Balto run inside? Did you see him?"

I also looked around. "I don't know."

I watched his blue eyes in the small amount of light coming from inside the house through the open front door. They widened with sudden panic. He started frantically searching, anxiously calling for Balto to come here, come here, please, come quick.

When he at last came across his dog's lifeless body, there was nothing I could do to console him. He was collapsed in sobs over his fallen companion's form for a long time. He wouldn't even allow me to touch him, aggressively shoving me away every time I tried.

Vlad allowed us to bury Balto on his property. Danny created a headstone by decorating a large rock with paint that I went out and purchased for him.

I didn't piece together that Vlad had been responsible for the appearance of those ghosts until much later when I had all the time in the world to contemplate all that had transpired in my jail cell.

…

"I know you killed his dog. Why, Vlad? Why did you do that to him?"

"I did what had to be done. It was the only path. I had to ensure the only path. The most perfect path."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Beyond the glass, I can see tears in Vlad's eyes. And it only makes me angrier. How dare he show such emotion about anything in my presence.

"It was the only way, Maddie. You need to understand that. There was no better ending for him."

"No better ending?" I spit. "Any ending would've been better than that. Or have you already forgotten what happened to him?" I choke. "What I had to do to him."

—and what I didn't have to do to him but did anyway because I just had to figure him out—

"That's not true," insists Vlad. "Don't you remember what Clockwork showed us?"

His dark persona, his ultimate enemy ravaging the world and terrorizing all in it.

"He was becoming that," says Vlad. "He was getting closer and closer to that everyday."

"You don't know that. Clockwork said that there were paths that did not lead to that."

"Yes, he did. But what he didn't tell you was that all of those paths terminated with his premature death."

I freeze, turn so cold that I am sure my heart has iced over.

"The only way for Danny to not become that…monster," says Vlad carefully, "was if he died before his mind was completely overtaken by his ghostly obsession."

His ghostly obsession to eliminate all of his pain and guilt and shame and agony and all manner of negative feelings. His dark persona was the culmination of that endeavor, a ghost who never felt any pain because he never felt remorse for anything he did, had no problem destroying anything that got in his way, had no problem killing anyone who dared to oppose him.

"That's not true," I cry. "Clockwork said there was one path that he was holding out for, the very best path for him."

"The path that would give him the longest life," said Vlad softly.

I remember that ominous qualifier so clearly.

"What happened, what you did, that was the path Clockwork was talking about, the one he was holding out for."

"How do you know that?"

"Because he showed me."

I stare at him.

"He showed me, Maddie."

"No, he didn't. He refused to show us."

"He refused to show  _you_."

I huff in irritation. "So what? You went back to see him on your own?"

"Yes."

Said with such simplicity but laced with so much emotion.

"He showed me. And what happened…that was the best path." Vlad is still looking straight at me.

"Me having to kill him?  _That_ was the best path?" I don't believe it. "Why did he show you that and not me?"

Vlad doesn't speak for a long moment. "Because he knew that if he showed you that you'd never go through with it." He pauses again. I can see his lips trembling. "But he knew that I would make sure that path happened if I saw it."

I am speechless.

"Because it was the best path," he whispers. "The most perfect outcome. Terrible, yes, but still the best for him. For all of us."

Vlad's ghostly obsession to achieve perfection. As horrifying as it is, it makes sense.

Now I know why he just happened to be there right after it happened. I was covered in my son's blood while sitting on his porch. He came up to me and demanded what I had done.

But he already knew.

"Maddie, please understand. There was no other way." Vlad leans toward me. "It had to be done. It had to be you. You had to do it. I had to make sure it happened."

"No," I scream. "No, you didn't have to put all those thoughts in his head. You didn't have to kill his dog. It was your fault. If you hadn't done that, he would've been fine."

"No. It would've happened anyway. There was no stopping that destructive force inside of him. It was better for him to be away from people as it happened so that he wouldn't hurt anyone. He had to remain isolated."

My whole body is shaking with rage. "You kept him broken down just so he wouldn't be able to find the courage to rejoin the world? The strength to see his family and friends again?"

Vlad lowers his gaze. "I did what I had to do in order to keep him there. Because it was safer for everyone else that he be alone."

"But apparently not safer for me? Why did you let  _me_  see him?"

Vlad swallows. He is clearly struggling with what he wants to say next. "Because you were part of the perfect path. It could only be you. Only you could…" He doesn't finish.

"Only I could—!" I glare at him hatefully. "What do you mean only I could? Why did it have to be me? Why not you or someone else?"

"Because he loved you," says Vlad softly. "It was the best way for him, too. He trusted you. He wouldn't have tried to hurt you or fight you off." His eyes glaze over. "In fact, I knew he would beg you to do it." He refocuses on me. "And he did, didn't he? He begged you to finally end his pain because he knew he couldn't do it himself, not without becoming what he feared most."

_End my pain. I can't take it anymore._

I am sobbing uncontrollably.

"I knew that you'd do that for him," says Vlad in a low voice. "But admittedly, I had no idea…Clockwork didn't show me what you would do to him after you killed him." He pauses. "If I had known, maybe—"

"What? You would've stopped me from killing him?" I snarl. "Of course that's what you should've done. How could you just let that happen? How could you encourage it to happen?"

Vlad is quiet for several contemplative seconds. "Maddie, it was the only way. Please, you must understand that. There was nothing else you could've done for him. In fact, you did the absolute best thing you could've done for him." Vlad is crying, too. "I don't want you to suffer for this. You saved us all; don't you see that? Let me take you from here, Maddie. Let me keep you safe and comfortable. You shouldn't be punished for this."

My screams are long and deafening and piercing. The guards quickly drag me away. Vlad bangs against the glass and tries in vain to make himself heard over my wailing.

I have to get away from him, this son of perdition.


	24. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·

Danny was sad. For days and days and days and more days after his dog was killed. He had been doing so much better, and just like that, he was depressed again, but he seemed so much worse this time. He would sleep all day and all night and all the time, and when he wasn't sleeping, he was lying down trying to get back to sleep.

"Danny, have you been eating anything?" I asked him in alarm when I came to visit him another weekend at the end of August. I ran my hands down his arms which seemed to be so much thinner and losing their muscle mass.

"I don't know," he answered monotonously in something of a stupor.

"What about drinking? Have you had any water today?"

"I don't know."

I caressed his nearly translucent face. "You don't look well."

He made no reply or movement.

"You can't keep doing this to yourself." I held his face, moved my fingers down his neck. "I can't let you keep doing this."

Danny's gaze hardened. He forcibly took my hands off of him.

"Do you honestly think this is good for you, Danny?" I asked him crossly. "Have you seen yourself lately? Do you even know what you look like?"

"What does it matter? Who do I need to impress?"

"It's not about impressing anyone. It's about staying healthy."

"I'm fine."

He started to walk away, but I grabbed his arm. "No, Danny, you're really not."

He normally would've been able to pull his arm out of my grasp. But it seemed that he was too weak from malnourishment and depression to muster any of his strength. I was able to easily pull him toward the closest mirror and force him to look at himself.

"There." I stared into his listless eyes in the mirror. "Do you see now? Do you see that you're  _not_  fine, Danny?"

He studied himself for a while, as if he had forgotten what he looked like. His blue eyes were the only points of color in his entire visage. Beneath his thick black hair, the rest of him was completely washed out, drained and bled and empty.

His eyes filled with tears. He looked away.

"Don't you remember how you used to look? How handsome you were?"

"It doesn't matter how I look now."

"But what about how you feel? Don't you want to be happy again, Danny?"

"No."

I was taken aback by this response. "Why not, Danny?"

"Because whenever I feel happy, I will inevitably experience something that makes me feel bad again. And it hurts more and more each time to be so forcibly pulled back down from joy."

"But that's just life, Danny. It's full of ups and downs like that."

Danny turned to me with tear-filled but hard eyes. "And that's exactly why I have to stay here. Away from life."

I stared at him.

"Pain is what triggers my obsession. The only way to reduce my pain is to prevent myself from feeling joy, too. No ups and downs at all. I need to forget what it's like to feel anything. Anytime I feel happiness will only make me feel sadness to that same extent." He paused. "Having Balto made me so happy. And now that he's gone, that happiness has just been replaced with pain that hurts just as much as the joy he brought me felt good." He shook his head. "I can't let that happen again. That was too close a call."

"Too close a call? What do you mean?"

He looked at me but did not explain.

"You really think that trying to rid yourself of all feelings is going to end any pain for you, Danny?" I gestured to the mirror. "You're only making yourself sick."

"I'll try to remember to eat, okay?"

"Do you even hear yourself? Do you know how you sound? How sick you sound?"

He made no reply.

"You need help, Danny. Please let me help you."

"You can't help me," he said quietly. "There's nothing you can do for me."

"Do you honestly believe that? Or are you too afraid to try to get better?"

No reply.

"If I can find a way to help you, will you let me?"

"You won't be able to."

"Will you at least let me try, Danny?"

He said nothing for a moment. I waited for him.

"All right," he finally said. "If you want to try, I'll let you."

I pulled him into a hug, rested my head against his shoulder.

"But please don't be mad at me if it doesn't work," he begged in a whisper.

…

"I need to leave," I tell the prison therapist. "I can't see him anymore. Can you help me?"

"I would agree that you should not see Vlad anymore," says the therapist. Her legs are crossed, her hands are clasped in her pencil-skirted lap. "We need to bar him from coming to visit you anymore."

"That's not enough," I say. She doesn't know that Vlad is a ghost, that he can easily overshadow anyone and get to me any number of ways. "He has so much money and power and influence. That won't be enough to stop him."

The therapist writes something down. She is frowning.

"I have to get out of here," I tell her. "Please help me."

She studies me sternly. I know what she is thinking:  _Why should I help you? I know what you did to your boy. Who cares if you're being tormented? Did you care about the torment you put your son through? You want Vlad to leave you alone? Why couldn't you leave Danny alone?_

And she's right. Why shouldn't I continue to let Vlad make me suffer?

How would Danny want me to feel?

…

Middle of September. I was home in Amity Park, lounging in the living room while Jack was downstairs in the lab. It was difficult for me to do any research of my own. When I wasn't visiting Danny in his isolated location in Pearltown, all I could think about was the earliest I could get away from Jack for another weekend without raising too much suspicion. He was of course wary of all of these trips I was supposedly taking to help out my struggling girlfriend, but he had stopped arguing with me about it.

I still loved Jack very deeply. And even today as I write this in my prison cell, I still love him so much. But things were definitely strained between the two of us. We had not been intimate since the previous December.

This particular September afternoon, someone knocked on the door. I was expecting a package and thought perhaps this was the delivery, but instead, I found Danny's friend Tucker on the front step.

"Tucker." I was quite surprised. "How are you doing?"

"I'm great," said Tucker. "How are you, Mrs. Fenton?"

I smiled. "You can call me Maddie if you'd like. We're both adults now."

Tucker returned the smile. "Maddie. That's…kind of weird, actually. You've always just been…Danny's mom."

I laughed, but I had no problem with this. Nothing brought me greater joy than being Danny's mother.

Tucker laughed just a little before awkwardly quieting. He pressed his lips together and swallowed. "Um…so…speaking of Danny, I just came by to ask you if he's okay?"

I stiffened but managed to force a smile. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, it's just…I've been trying to reach him for months. Since January, actually. And I just can't get in touch with him. He won't answer his phone or his e-mails or anything. I haven't even seen him log into any of his social media accounts."

"Ah, well, he's been busy. And, you know, pretty sad since Sam broke up with him."

"I know. He was really bent over that. I'll never forget how he looked that night."

Tucker's eyes glazed over. It occurred to me then that the very last time Tucker had seen Danny was that night right after Sam broke his heart. And it occurs to me now that Tucker's final image of Danny alive will forever be his swollen blue eyes.

"So have you heard from him, then?" he asked. "The way you say that makes it sound like you've been talking to him."

"I have, yes. But what's on your mind, Tucker?"

"I've been talking to Sam. She hadn't spoken to Danny since...and it's not because she didn't want to, but he had been leaving her so many messages that she just had to cut him off, hoping that when he calmed down that they'd be able to salvage their friendship."

I exhaled but stopped myself from saying anything.

"But then I told her a couple weeks ago that I hadn't heard from him at all since New Year's and that I was worried. And so she tried to reach out to him hoping that would get him to respond. But there was still no word from him. And so she finally decided to go to his house there in Stonepoint to check on him."

"Why would she do that?" I asked more tersely than I should have. "She's not his girlfriend anymore."

Tucker blinked in surprise. "Ah, no, that's true, but she was his friend before all that. His best friend. And since he wasn't responding to her messages, she wanted to see if she could reach him physically." Tucker cleared his throat. "Actually, it was me who asked her to go to his house. I was just really, really worried, and I think that worried her enough to convince her to go."

I hated hearing about Sam even daring to try to see Danny, but it pained me to hear Tucker talking about his friend in this way. My Danny was loved by others, that was for sure. I was not the only one who thought the world of him.

But at that moment, I was Danny's only world. He was ignoring everyone else. And again, I swear to you, reader, that that was his own choice.

"So she talked to his roommates," Tucker continued, "and they told her that they hadn't heard from him in a while either. And in fact, they couldn't even remember the last time they had seen him. They assumed he had returned from his trip home over winter break because his rent payments were all still on time, but they hadn't actually seen him."

I had continued to pay Danny's monthly rent payments. I just thought he'd be returning soon, and I didn't want Jack to know that he was actually in another house miles and miles away.

"She asked if she could check out his room, and it looked to her as if it hadn't been touched in months." Tucker looked at me seriously. "It looked as if he hadn't been there at all since December, as if he never returned from his stay here over winter break."

I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorframe.

"And so I came over here to ask you about it. We didn't want to report it to the police without knowing for sure that he's missing." He studied me again. "But you said you've heard from him, and you don't seem worried. Should I not be worried either?"

"No. You don't need to worry," I told him. It was a lie, though. Danny needed to be worried about. But I figured it was best to leave that worrying to me. "He's fine. He just decided to move somewhere else, finish up his bachelor's degree away from Sam."

Tucker looked completely befuddled.

"He just didn't want to be in the same city as Sam. It hurt him too much. So he left."

"But then why did he leave all of his stuff in his room? Why is he still paying rent for it?"

"Jack and I have been paying his rent. I have it set up automatically, so I must've just forgotten about it. And as for his things, I guess he didn't even want to return for that, so he left them. He had brought a lot of things here when he stayed for Christmas, so it's not like he had nothing."

"So where is he now, then?" Tucker looked past me, as if checking to see if Danny was somewhere behind me.

"Well, if he hasn't been talking to you, then I think he would rather you not know," I told him simply. "He's just going through a hard time, and he wants to be alone while he figures it out."

Tucker stared at me with such hurt eyes behind his glasses. "But I'm his friend, and I've  _never_  seen him do something like this. He's never cut me off before." He intently studied my face. "Are you sure he's okay?"

"Yes," I assured him. "And I'm sure you'll be hearing from him soon."

I was definitely not sure of that all. But I was still hopeful that Danny would indeed reach out to his friends again. I know what you're thinking, but I did not delight in Danny being locked away where only I had access to him. It grieved me that he was deteriorating all alone in his dark disorientation.

"Can you tell him I'd really like it if he at least sent me a message letting me know he's okay? I'll give him time if that's what he needs, but I'd really like to hear directly from him." Tucker was shaking just a little, his expression twisted with anxiety.

"I'll tell him."

We smiled and politely said our goodbyes. I then closed and locked the door behind me.

I had quite a bit of damage control to do right then. I had to tell Jack that Danny had decided to transfer his credits to a different college and that maybe he'd be graduating even later than December because this new college would not accept all of his credits. I had to ask Vlad to have someone—his ghostly servants, maybe—to quietly retrieve Danny's things from his old room in Stonepoint and take them to his current location in Pearltown

I had to keep Danny hidden. Because it was what he wanted. And if I didn't do what he wanted, he would start hiding from me, too, and I just couldn't let that happen.

…

I have to leave. I have to go. I must get away from Vlad. I am requesting a transfer to another prison.

Goodbye, son. That's all I can say. There's no call for me to stay, so I'm leaving.


	25. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:

He whispered, "Where are you?"

He was begging for help from God.

If God somehow is real and had chosen to answer Danny's prayer in that moment, then He surely does work in mysterious ways. What could be more mysterious than forcing a mother to kill her own son?

…

As the summer turned into fall, I went out to visit Danny far more frequently. Jack stopped questioning it. In fact, he and I really weren't talking much at all anymore. But I didn't really notice. All I could think about was Danny.

When I visited him, I always brought tons of food with me, all of his favorites. I fixed up ready-made meals to last a whole week. I bought frozen meals for him to just pop into the microwave. I knew that he wouldn't eat unless I made it easy for him.

I also made him go on walks with me outside. The foliage was not ideal as it blocked out the sunlight I wanted him to get, but at least he was breathing in fresh air.

The weekend before Halloween, I bought him bags of candy. I knew that junk food was not very good for treating depression, but at that point, I was just desperate to make sure he was eating  _something_.

He managed a weak smile at the sight. "Wow, I didn't realize it was the end of October already."

"You should see the cute costumes Jazz bought for Davis and Declan."

Danny shook his head. "No, I shouldn't."

On a physical level, my efforts to keep the fridge and pantry stocked for him seemed to be working. He filled out his clothes, regained some of his color. His muscle mass was still gradually dwindling, but he was otherwise looking better.

But was he feeling better?

As far as I could tell, not at all.

Vlad came one weekend. Danny was on the couch in the living room in yet another attempt to fall asleep even though he had just woken from a nap. Vlad studied him for some time before joining me outside on the porch.

"Maddie? How are you doing?" Vlad pulled up a chair beside me, positioned it so that he was facing me.

"I'm doing okay," I told him.

"Are you really?" Vlad reached out and took my hand in his. I let him. The warm contact felt good, especially since I hadn't been getting anything from Jack.

"Yeah," I assured him. "How are you?"

Vlad held onto my hand and looked down briefly as he thought about his answer. "I am worried about our little badger," he finally said.

Little badger.  _Our_  little badger. Such an affectionate nickname, as if Vlad regarded Danny as his own son. As if the three of us somehow formed a family unit.

Vlad had no part of him. Danny was  _mine_.

But his concern for Danny seemed genuine, so I opted to let it go.

"So am I," I said with a moan. "What can I do for him, Vlad? How can I help him?"

Vlad's expression became more serious. He patted my hand. "Whatever you do, you mustn't exhaust yourself. Ultimately, it's all up to him. You have little control."

I had little control. I knew that. I couldn't make him rejoin the world. If I tried or even told anyone where he was, he could easily disappear and never be found again.

But acknowledging my lack of control didn't make this any easier for me to accept.

"I'm his mother," I said, sitting up straighter. "I can't just let him go on like this."

Vlad patted my hand again. "You're right. You can't."

I curiously waited for him to elaborate.

"You have little control, but the control you do have is powerful." Vlad moved in a little closer to me, his eyes intently focused on mine. "You can stop him if things go too far. You always have that."

Stop him? What did he even mean? I stared at him with knitted eyebrows.

"Ah, I just mean…" Vlad stroked my hand. "Like you said, you're his mother. If he's going to listen to anyone, it'll be you."

I realize now in my prison cell what implication Vlad was trying to make. I now understand that it was Vlad's intention all along to push me to end Danny. Because he and Clockwork were convinced that this was somehow the "best" path for everyone.

But that day, I simply took my hand away in confusion. "I've been trying to talk to him, but I'm just not getting through to him." I sighed. "What do you think about therapy?"

It was Vlad's turn to be confused. "Therapy?"

"Well, yeah. I can't get Danny to leave, but I'm sure I could pay someone to come out here. What do you think? Do you think talking to a professional might help him?"

"Maddie, I feel I need to caution you," said Vlad urgently. "Therapy is based on human psychology. It's meant for human minds."

My eyes lidded warily. "Danny  _is_  human."

"He's  _half_  human."

I glared at him. I knew this was true and even found great pride in my son's ghostly identity, but the way Vlad said this sounded demeaning. "What are you trying to say? That therapy somehow isn't going to do anything for him because he's half ghost?"

"I can't say it won't do anything, but I fear it won't be as effective as you're hoping."

"I'll do some research. Maybe I can find a psychiatrist who'd be willing to come out, someone who can prescribe medication for him."

"Medication, like antidepressants? Or something else? Those are all meant for humans, too. They've never been tested on ghosts. Ghosts don't have the same chemical make-up."

"All right, yes, Danny has some ghostly physicalities, but his mind is human," I assured him. "His head and heart are human."

"Then why is he still here, Maddie?"

I leaned back with a frown.

"If he had a truly human mind, he would've left here by now. He would've gone back to school, reconnected with his friends." Vlad shrugged. "In fact, if his mind were truly human, I'd daresay that he would've never run off at all. He would've toughed it out like a normal human being."

"He's fine. He's normal. He's just going through a hard time, and he needs a little more help than I can give him."

"It's been almost ten months, Maddie. A 'normal' person would've at least shown some improvement by now." Vlad's voice rose as he gestured to inside the house. "But he's actually worse than he was when he first isolated himself out here!"

I shushed him. "Keep your voice down. I don't want him to hear us talking about him."

"I just don't want you to be disappointed," said Vlad in a softer voice. "Take it from someone who knows what it's like to not have a fully human mind." He lowered his eyes. "We truly just aren't like other people."

He seemed genuinely aggrieved by this. It actually touched my heart with sympathy for him.

"Vlad, I really hope you haven't been saying things like this to Danny," I said to him in a pleading manner. "I really don't want him thinking there's no hope for him to get better."

"There isn't anything wrong with him knowing that," said Vlad. "In fact, I think it'd be easier for him to control if he could fully accept this…inhuman part of him. And I just think you should be aware as well that this isn't something you can just fix. If you focus too much on trying to get him help or pushing him back into the real world, you might just make him feel like there's something wrong with him, like he's broken." Vlad paused. "And you don't want him to feel that way, do you?"

I mentally scoffed. Had he even seen Danny lately? Clearly, Danny  _was_  broken, and I couldn't just sit around hoping that he'd improve with time.

I found a qualified therapist who could come out to Danny. Danny was at first reluctant, but I reminded him that he had promised to let me try to help him.

He had no faith in himself to recover from this. I had to maintain all faith and hope for him.

…

"I met with Danny several times from the beginning of November in twenty-twelve up until April of twenty-thirteen," said the therapist from the witness stand. He never looked at me.

"Who was it that first contacted you?" asked my attorney.

"Maddie Fenton."

"And for what reason did she contact you?"

"She was looking for a professional to talk to her son, Danny. She said he was suffering with depression. She said she needed someone to come directly to him since he was unable to even leave the house he was staying in."

"Did it sound to you that she genuinely cared about him? That she didn't want him to feel depressed anymore?"

"Objection. Leading," interrupted the prosecutor.

The therapist was supposed to help my case. He was supposed to show the jury that I was actually trying to help Danny, that I wasn't trying to keep him locked away in a perpetual state of misery.

But then it was the prosecutor's turn to ask questions.

"Did Danny make any progress during his therapy sessions with you?"

"It would depend on what you consider progress," said the therapist.

"Let me try again. You began treating Danny for depression in November of twenty-twelve, correct?"

"Yes."

"When you spoke to him for the last time in April of twenty-thirteen, was he still depressed?"

"Yes."

"If he was still depressed, and that was the whole reason for the therapy, then why did you stop going to see him?"

"His mother—Maddie—informed me over the phone that he no longer wished to speak to me."

"Maddie told you this?"

"Yes."

"Did Danny tell you this?"

"No, he did not."

"So you only have Maddie's word that that was what Danny wanted?"

"Yes."

"Was Maddie aware that Danny was still depressed even after you last spoke to him?"

"We talked about it over the phone, yes. But she said that although she recognized Danny was still depressed, he simply didn't want to continue anymore."

My defense objected. The judge overruled.

"So Maddie clearly told you that she knew Danny was still depressed, correct?" said the prosecutor.

"Yes," replied the therapist.

"And she claimed that Danny simply didn't want to continue, but you never heard that from him directly. Is that true?"

"Yes."

Repetition. This trial has been full of it. The points must be tediously clarified to the jury.

"And even though she knew he was depressed, she still called you up to stop the therapy."

"Yes."

"Even though that was the whole reason she had asked for your help in the first place?"

"Yes."

I could only sit and listen and fume. I had already confessed to ending his life. I was more than willing to accept punishment for that. But I hated this angle they were trying to put on it, that they were trying to make it look as if I was the one who was keeping him so sad and lonely, that I was so obsessed with him that I wanted to keep him imprisoned for my own sick pleasure.

No, he did that to himself. Any pleasure I got out of it was inconsequential.


	26. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.

As I sat in court during my trial, I never knew who or what I should look at. Most of the time, I just looked down and listened.

I never denied killing him. I only pleaded not guilty of first-degree premeditated murder. But as the days passed and the testimonies continued, I could see my future verdict. I could see it in the faces of the jury members as they listened and noted and observed.

"Did you ever talk to Danny about his mother, Maddie?" the prosecutor asked the therapist.

"Yes."

"How often did you two talk about her?"

"We talked about her every single session. Somehow, she always came up."

"What sort of things would he say about her?"

"Danny thought very highly of his mother," said the therapist softly. "He loved her dearly."

My heart swelled. I looked up at the therapist, but he never met my gaze.

"Is this what Danny said to you?"

"Yes. Danny told me himself that he thought very highly of her and loved her."

"Did he only ever say positive things about Maddie?"

The therapist hesitated before finally answering. "No."

"He said that he loved her." The prosecutor paused. "Did he ever express any other feelings toward Maddie?"

"Yes," said the therapist, sounding uneasy.

"What other feelings did he express toward Maddie?"

"He…he admitted to me that he was a little afraid of her."

"Did he tell you why he was afraid of her?"

"He said that…he was afraid of what she wanted to do to him."

There was a very uncomfortable hush that fell over the whole room.

The prosecutor looked through his notes. "Did he talk about the things he thought she wanted to do to him?"

"No," said the therapist. "I could never get him to tell me any specifics about that. He spoke very cryptically about it."

"Did you try getting specifics from him?"

"Of course."

"Did he tell you why he didn't want to give you specifics?"

The therapist was quiet for some time. "I could never get him to tell me that either."

The absolute worst part of this whole ordeal was when recordings from a couple of the therapy sessions were played in court. I had no idea that the therapist had recorded anything.

"She kept asking me—begging me to come back to visit her. She always found some sort of excuse to fly me out, and even when she had no excuse, she still insisted on it."

Danny's voice. Slightly mechanical as it played over a set of speakers but still so clearly belonging to him. A haunting memory, a ghostly whisper that had been lost to the past. I started crying almost immediately.

"And I couldn't say no. I wanted to. Sam wanted me to. But I didn't want to make her mad. I didn't want to upset her. Besides, even if I said no, she would've come out to visit me. I could never get away from her."

It hurt so much. Such stabbing pain as I recalled all the times he tried to get out of coming back to Amity Park to visit me.

"She could never just leave me alone. And even now, I'm only staying here because she wants me to."

Those words. The context was completely missing, but of course they could only be interpreted one way, that I was somehow forcing Danny to stay there, keeping him captive. No one could ever believe that he had chosen to isolate himself and that I simply begged him to stay in that particular place so that I wouldn't lose him again.

"I just feel like when she looks at me…that she's not really seeing me." Danny's voice cracked. "I feel like she's looking through me. No, inside me. She sees what I am and not who I am."

I covered my eyes in shame and agony.

"I feel like any day now, she's going to break down and tear into me. One of these days, I'm afraid I'll wake up strapped down to a table and…"

"What do you mean, Danny?" The therapist sounded alarmed and confused. "Why do you feel like she has that sort of interest in you?"

Danny never replied to this. The therapist tried and tried to get Danny to say more, but there was never any response.

…

I was there the first time the therapist arrived to meet with Danny. He seemed like a nice enough guy, not at all stuffy or conceited. I spoke with him for a moment, introduced myself and briefly gave him an idea of what was going on. I couldn't tell him everything, of course. I told him that Danny was suffering deeply from depression and that it was preventing him from rejoining the world. The therapist then spoke with Danny privately while I waited upstairs in another room.

The therapist came on a weekly basis. I wanted him to come bi-weekly, but because Danny was so against it, the compromise we worked out was just once a week. Expensive since there was no way I was about to claim this on insurance, but I was in charge of our finances anyway. Jack never knew where our money was going most of the time as he trusted me to keep it all in order. And if he ever did wonder, I was prepared to tell him it was for Danny's tuition at the new college to which he had transferred.

But money was never a problem to me. We had plenty, and it was worth every cent if it could somehow bring my child back into the light.

The therapy sessions continued for weeks. However, I could never get much of an update from the therapist about how Danny was doing or what they talked about. Since Danny was an adult, I was barred from such knowledge unless Danny agreed to have such information released to me, and he had apparently expressed that he did not want me to know what was said in his sessions.

So the therapist couldn't tell me anything. But that didn't stop me from trying to get information from Danny.

As he lay on the sofa one day like he so often did shortly after the therapist left, I came up behind him and gently massaged his head. "How did it go?"

"Fine, I guess."

"Are you feeling any better?"

He shook his head.

I moved around to the other side of the sofa and knelt beside him. He gazed at me with those striking blue eyes of his.

"Danny, you know it's December now, right? Christmas is soon. Jazz and her family are going to be coming to visit. We'll all be together again."

Danny said nothing.

"Danny, will you please join us for Christmas? Please?"

"No," he said simply. He turned over on the sofa so that his back was to me.

"Why not?" I was close to tears. "You already missed Thanksgiving."

Thanksgiving had indeed been a rather awkward and somewhat lonely occasion without Danny at the dinner table. Jazz and her family had chosen to be with her husband's family that year, so it was just me and Jack, the two of us still a little out of sorts with each other. We had gone out to eat instead, but our conversation had been stilted and disjointed. I had made up some excuse about Danny not being able to fly out for Thanksgiving because he had some major exams to study for that he really needed to pass so that he could graduate as soon as possible. Jack accepted the excuse, but he was clearly troubled that he himself had not heard from his son in nearly a year.

"Please don't miss Christmas, too."

"I have to. You know why. I'm not explaining this to you anymore."

And so Christmas that year was also awkward and lonely and sad. Because Jazz and her family had joined us for Christmas the previous year, they visited us for a few days before taking off to be with Connor's family for the actual holiday.

"Where's Danny?" asked Jazz. "We brought gifts for him."

"He's not coming out this year," I said simply. "But I can mail these to him."

Jazz stared at me in confusion. "He's not coming out for Christmas? What do you mean? He's not back to hating Christmas, is he?"

"Well, considering that Sam broke up with him around Christmas and he was planning on proposing to her Christmas Day, I would not be surprised if he once again hates this holiday."

Jazz hummed to herself as she mulled this over.

"And I think he's just really busy with his studies, and, well, you know…he's still hung up on Sam." I was fumbling for excuses, any reasoning to explain the lunacy of this situation.

And when Jazz and her family left, I was forced to continue with these wild excuses as Jack and I celebrated Christmas alone.

"So…Danny still hasn't graduated," noted Jack.

Christmas morning. We had already exchanged our gifts to each other and were sitting in the living room by our decorated tree.

"Right. Well, remember when I told you he was transferring colleges?"

Jack nodded with dulled eyes.

"Well, this particular university won't accept some of his credits. You know how picky colleges can be. So he has to retake some classes."

Jack sighed loudly. "Okay, so what does that mean?"

I paused, stalling what I knew would vex him. And that was when I began to realize just how crazy this all was, just how unwell Danny was for thinking that this was somehow a good idea.

But I ignored it. I didn't think Danny was so far gone that he was beyond being reasoned with. He just needed time and therapy and nutrition and then everything would surely clear for him and he'd be fine and healthy and well and happy again.

"It means he might not be able to graduate for a while."

Jack leaned back and stared up at the ceiling with another loud sigh. "A while? What does _that_  mean?"

I cringed. "Hopefully by the end of next semester?"

"I want to talk to him. Can you please get him on the phone? Right now?"

"Right now?"

"Yes. You said you've been able to get in touch with him, right?"

"Well, yes. But very rarely. He doesn't talk to me all that often."

"And you said you could mail things to him? So you must know where he is?"

"No. Not exactly. He just gave me a PO box."

"Well, how are you two talking? E-mail? Text? Can I see his messages?"

"No, no. Just over the phone," I said quickly. I truly had no messages to show him.

"So can you call him now?"

"He calls me. When I try to call him, it goes straight to voicemail."

Jack sat on the couch in silence for some time. I watched him closely, watched his eyes twitch slightly and his expression fall with dismay.

"It's just been so long. And the last thing I said to him…" He paused. "I still want to apologize for that. And him not even joining us for Christmas…I just feel like something isn't right. Why is he avoiding us all like this? Why doesn't he want us to even know where he is?" He turned to me. "Mads, please, is our boy okay?"

He was gazing at me imploringly. It was all I could do to fight back my own tears. No, our boy was not okay at all, not in any sense of the word.

"He's okay, Jack. He's an adult now, and he can take care of himself. He's even got a new job and is paying his own rent and bills."

"I really don't mind supporting him," said Jack in a pained voice. "I never wanted him to think that he was a drain on our finances. I just didn't want him to quit school."

I moved in close to Jack and cuddled with him. It was the most intimate we had been in a long time, and it was very long overdue.

But although we were able to satisfy some of our aching urges and needs that Christmas, there was such a deep underlying sadness and desperation throughout it all.

The following weekend when I went to visit Danny, I brought his Christmas gifts with me, all beautifully and carefully wrapped. I set them on the coffee table. From the couch, he only stared at them.

"Merry Christmas, Danny." I took a seat beside him and kissed his head.

"These…are for me?"

"Of course. From me, Dad, and Jazz and Connor. Oh, and an extra one from Santa."

I put an arm around him, but he made no movement at all.

"I can't accept these," he finally said.

"What? Why not? We want you to have them, sweetie."

"Well, for one, I didn't get anything for you guys."

"Oh, no, you did. I bought gifts for everyone from you."

Danny looked at me curiously.

"Well, it was difficult enough to explain why you weren't joining us for Christmas. I didn't want to tell them that you also weren't giving any gifts." I chuckled. "I even bought something for myself from you." I held up my wrist, which was adorned with a colorful crystal bracelet. "And I love it."

Danny didn't even smile. He looked back at the gifts and crossed his arms. "I still don't want them."

"Danny, I don't understand. Why not?"

"I don't want anything that reminds me…of…" He shook his head, lowered it, shut his eyes.

"Reminds you of…? What? Your family? That there are people in this world who love and care about you?"

I asked this ironically, but Danny nodded.

"I don't want to be reminded of that." His voice dropped to just above a whisper. "It hurts too much. And I have to control how much pain I feel."

"Danny, this makes no sense. These gifts come from people who love you. Shouldn't that make you happy?"

"No. Because it reminds me of how I can't see them right now."

"But you  _can_  see them!" I yelled, throwing up my hands. "You don't have to stay here, Danny."

"No," said Danny stubbornly. "I'm afraid of hurting them. This is the only way to be sure I don't hurt anyone."

"You know you're hurting them by refusing to see and talk to them, right?"

A long pause. "That's better than me physically hurting them."

"And what makes you think you'll ever physically hurt them?"

"Because I almost did. Dad, Sam…and it gets harder and harder with even the smallest offenses." Danny looked at me. "Even now, with you talking to me like this…please be careful, Mom."

I faltered and leaned away from him.

"I promise that's not a threat," said Danny desperately. "It's just…like I said, it's hard for me to control. So please don't get me to that point." He lowered his head. "Please don't berate me for this. I've given this a lot of thought, and this really is the best way."

"How can you possibly think this is the best way?" I asked, trying to sound as non-accusatory as possible. I tried to make it sound like a genuine question.

"Because…being with others inevitably leads to bad feelings of some kind. That's just how all relationships are. Good times and bad times. And I just can't handle those bad times, not the way a normal human should be able to. My ghost side always overreacts." He sighed. "So, yes, I'll miss the good times and the good feelings, but if it means that I also won't have the bad times and the bad feelings, then it's worth it. I have to stop him, have to stop my ghost side from taking over like I know he potentially can."

I had seen it. I knew all too well that this could happen.

"The more bad feelings I have, the more obsessed I'll be with removing them, and the more obsessed I am with removing them…" Danny looked across the room. "Well, that's how he came about in the first place."

"Isolating yourself like this is  _not_  going to eliminate your bad feelings, Danny." I forced him to look at me. "This is just going to create more bad feelings, not fewer. You've been so sick, physically and emotionally. You think that this is helping you?"

Danny made no reply. He tried to look away, but I forced him right back in my direction.

"Your dark ghost side was born out of a void of feeling, Danny. You removed your feelings in an attempt to make the hurt go away, but that only created the darkness that you're so afraid of now."

Danny stared at me with confused intrigue.

"You think that it's the bad feelings that created this monster, but it wasn't that at all. It was the removal of them." I held onto his shoulders. "As long as you have those bad feelings, your humanity is still winning. And if you try to rid yourself of them, even by simply trying to hide from life, then you're just running straight into his arms." I gazed at him tearfully. "Your own paranoia is undoing you."

"How do you know all this?" asked Danny in a murmur. "I know I told you some things, but the way you're talking…it's as if you have firsthand knowledge of what happened."

I realized that I had never told him about my encounter with Clockwork. "I…listen, Danny, when you told me about that future you battled, I just had to see for myself. I went to Clockwork and asked him to show me exactly what happened."

Danny broke away from my contact. "When was this? You went alone? Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? And why didn't you tell me?"

I opted not to tell him Vlad accompanied me. "I just had to see for myself. I had to know. And I'm telling you that you're wrong. Cutting yourself off is not going to prevent him from coming into existence."

"He came about when I could no longer handle my pain and asked Vlad to tear my human half out of me," said Danny heatedly. "Pain and sadness and guilt and shame are notoriously known as human emotions in the Ghost Zone. Only humanoid ghosts are able to experience them, and even then…" Danny shook his head. "It's never even close to what a true human is able to feel. And with my ghostly obsession to eliminate my pain, I have to reduce my pain so that I never get to that point where I simply have to yank it all out. Like the need to sneeze but for some reason it won't come, you know? Just knowing that you'd feel so much better if you could just sneeze and get it out, and it's just all you can think about and it's so frustrating that you just can't get it out and you try and try and try because you just so desperately want— _need_ that relief."

Silent tears collected in his blue eyes. I moved in closer and wrapped an arm around him.

"The most horrible heartbreak led to the onset of my dark side," Danny said quietly as his tears fell. "So if I keep my heart locked up, then it can't be broken."

"It's all going to be okay," I whispered in his ear. "You're going to be just fine, Danny." I still felt his thinking was completely wrong, but I realized that criticism of his thoughts wasn't what he needed in this moment. I still hoped that with therapy and time that his paranoia would be relieved in some way, but for that small moment we were together on that sofa, I only wanted him to know that he was okay and that he was loved.

But I wish that he could've found a way to accept that bad feelings were actually good things for him to experience, that bad feelings made the good feelings possible and so much more meaningful.

A normal human mind could've perhaps come to recognize that. But his mind…his mind was not fully human. His mind was broken and beyond repair. But I didn't yet know it as I sat with him that day.

…

A hearing has been granted for me, a hearing to assess my situation and decide whether I should be moved to another prison.

I must prepare. I must get my hair done and look as presentable and as intelligent and as worthy as possible for their consideration.

I can't screw this up, not like I screwed it up with Danny. I have to get away from Vlad.

I have to because I know that Danny wouldn't want me to suffer through Vlad's forceful visits anymore. My sweet boy would never want that for me, not even after what I did to him.


	27. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:

Can this be real? Holding on so tight, and now all the memories have got you crying every night.

Hugging it out, fighting it out, what's this about?

Can time be rewound?

Or would it be better to just let all of these memories drown?

…

The winter continued, the weeks passed. The therapist came once a week, but Danny never showed any progress at all. He still spent most of his time either sleeping or trying to sleep.

It made no sense to me. How was it that he wasn't improving at all? How was it that he actually seemed to be getting worse? Therapy and nutrition and time would've helped anyone else. So what the hell was going on here? Why was my son still so remarkably depressed? Why was my boy still convinced that he needed to keep his heart locked away?

I waited as patiently as I could, visited as often as I dared without irritating Jack too much. But Jack had stopped questioning my weekend visits with "my poor girlfriend" altogether and barely said anything when I told him I was once again leaving. If he ever thought that I was perhaps visiting someone else, perhaps a secret lover, he never brought it up. I could see signs of depression in him as well.

But Danny came first. At least Jack wasn't shutting himself up and was still being productive. Danny was broken down and only breaking more and more with each passing day.

When April finally arrived and I realized that I would once again have to tell Jack that Danny wouldn't be graduating this semester either, I wasn't sure who to be more upset with, the therapist or Danny. The therapist clearly wasn't giving Danny the treatment he needed and surely wasn't as qualified to deal with depression like he assured me he was.

And Danny…

Danny clearly wasn't even trying to improve. He seemed to have given up without any effort at all. I had never known him to give up on anything so easily, but that was the only explanation. He was just so convinced that there was no help for him that he refused to even give it a fair try. He was just so sure his decision to isolate himself was best that he refused to believe that perhaps he could rejoin the world someday.

One early April afternoon after the therapist left, I once again found Danny lying on the sofa. I approached him crossly and stood over him with my hands on my hips. He opened his eyes and warily looked up at me.

"I don't understand why you're still like this."

Danny sat up. "Like this…?"

"Yes!" I yelled. "You've been seeing this therapist for nearly five months now, and you're still…like this!"

Danny stood and faced me. "I told you it wouldn't work."

I scoffed. "Oh, is that it? You wanted to prove me wrong? You've been purposely sabotaging your therapy just to prove a point?"

"No, of course not."

"Oh, so you  _have_  been trying? You've actually been putting in some effort to get better? Is that why you're still always moping around and sleeping? Because you're just trying so damn hard to get better?"

Danny turned from me. "Mom, please, don't—"

"I don't understand this. I don't understand  _you_. You've just given up. You're not fighting for yourself at all. You're just so convinced that you have no control over your ghostly obsession that you're not even trying." I hit the back of the sofa. "And that's not you! That's not the son I've known, the boy I raised. You don't just give up. You've always tried your best at everything. You never let something defeat you so easily. It's why you made such a great hero for the town, because you braved even the most difficult battles no matter the risk, no matter how much it hurt you. You always stared down your enemies with such determination and courage. You never let an enemy beat you, certainly not without a fight." I held out a hand toward him. "This isn't you, Danny! Why have you given up? Why aren't you trying? Why are you letting this enemy defeat you?"

Danny kept himself turned away from me, but I could see that he was shaking as he raised a hand to his mouth.

"I'm sick of this, Danny," I said tearfully. "I'm sick of trying to explain to Dad and Jazz and your friends where you've been, what's going on with you. They're all worried sick about you.  _I'm_  worried sick about you. You're all I ever think about, and I just don't know what to do for you anymore!"

Danny turned back to me just as tearfully but said nothing.

"What can I do for you?" I bent over the sofa and propped my elbows on the back while I sobbed into my hands. "Please tell me how I can help you because I can't just let you go on like this."

Danny didn't say anything for a long time. The only sound in the room was my sobbing.

At last, he approached me, gently placing his hands on my shoulders. I raised my head to look at him.

"There is one thing," he whispered.

I stared at him, turning colder and colder.

Down we fell, down to Vlad's own basement lab. Once there, I searched through Vlad's various instruments and equipment, his cabinets and drawers. I took out anything that could help me carry out Danny's request.

I laid everything out on a counter before turning back to Danny. He was shaking and shivering, hyperventilating.

"Danny?" I rushed over to him.

He leaned against a table and heaved. "I'm fine."

I placed one hand on his and the other on his back while he just breathed. I remembered when we were in nearly this same situation before, when I had him down in our basement lab back home seven years earlier insisting that I only wanted to be sure that his ghostly mutation wasn't harming him.

But this time, Danny was the one who wanted to be sure of that.

"Danny, it's going to be okay," I said soothingly as I rubbed his back. "We only need to do some basic tests, okay? I'll just take some vitals, look at some blood samples. And ectoplasm samples."

"Ectoplasm samples?" Danny straightened up in alarm. "You mean I'm going to need to transform?"

"Well, yes. I mean, if you really want me to do this for you, we need to be thorough."

Danny averted his gaze. "It's just…when I'm in ghost form, my compulsions are nearly impossible to control."

He looked genuinely afraid. I ran my fingers through his hair.

"We'll be quick," I assured him. "And if you want, we can look at brain activity, too."

I did exactly what I told him I'd do, exactly what he asked me to do. I measured and observed and noted and broke his skin with needles. When it was finally time for him to transform so that I could get some spectral readings and samples, we both held our breath for different reasons.

He was frightened and tried not to think.

But I was enraptured by his haunting glow and his icy hair. After all this time, his ghost side, Phantom, was still mesmerizingly beautiful, and the supernatural researcher within me still wanted to figure him out. I longed to carry out so many other experiments, yearned to see the structure of his nervous system, ached to test the strength of his bone density.

But I resisted. When I got what I needed, I told him he could change back, and he gladly did. He went back upstairs while I analyzed everything. I had not memorized the numbers I had jotted down seven years before, but I remembered a few things.

Most notably, I could see that there were definitely more ghostly antigens in his blood than there had been before. Additionally, there were a large number of strange ghostly antibodies that were foreign to me. I had never seen anything like them in any other ghost.

I looked at other results, made more calculations, but the changes in his blood from what I had seen before stayed at the back of my head as I tried to make sense of everything. His brain waves were also far more erratic in both his human and ghost form than they had been before.

I at last came out of the basement and found Danny lying down in the living room. I stared at him in silence for some time, waited for him to open his eyes and realize I was there. When he finally did, he sat up and studied my face apprehensively.

"You're fine," I told him carefully. "You're just fine."

I couldn't tell him the truth. I had to keep his negative feelings to a minimum, and panicking him was not going to help him. I had to do what I could to keep his stress levels as low as possible, to lower the amount of searing inflammation in his body so that his ghostly antibodies had less to latch onto and attack.

He said nothing, but he looked a little relieved. After that, I cancelled with the therapist since that apparently was doing nothing for him. No, the problem was not only in his mind but in his chemical make-up. I had seen it with my own eyes. No amount of therapy was going to fix him. I had to figure something else out, had to discover a way to stop his ghost side from destroying his human side.

That was all around his twenty-third birthday.

He lived just one more year after that.

…

I will be getting a hearing to be moved to another prison. I work happily with Baskova on the laundry, humming to myself and feeling like I have already been granted my request. I am sure I can charm them to giving me what I want, especially if the committee consists of men. I am so good at working men over.

"Maddie, you seem happy," observes Baskova.

"As happy as I can be," I hum.

"I like it," says Baskova. "You're usually so sad."

I smile at her.

"Why are you so happy?"

"I'm going to be leaving." I am not even entertaining the thought that they will deny my request to move. Surely, when they hear the hardships I've been having in this particular prison, they will understand. Even my therapist is on my side now.

And besides, it's not just for my sake that I leave. If I continue to stay, I am sure that I will accept Vlad's offer just so I can kill him, too.

Baskova's face falls. "You're leaving?"

I pause and study her. I am the only one here who ever talks to her, the only one who listens to her ramblings. If I leave, she will have no one.

I lightly touch her thinning grey hair. "I am sorry, Klara."

She doesn't say anything for some time as we both continue to fold laundry.

"Can you tell me about your son?" she finally asks. "I've told you a lot about my husband, and I've heard about what you…what happened between you and your son. But I'd like to just…hear about who he was." Baskova pauses. "Because it seems to me that you really did love him. Just because you…it doesn't mean you didn't love him, right?"

I start crying. I wrap my arms around Baskova.

"I'd be only too happy to tell you all about him."

I pull back and look at her at arm's length with tears in my eyes.

"His name was Danny."

…

Looking real nice, paying the price, feeling like ice.

Falling far behind, and now all the misery has got you crying all the time.

Let it all out. Talk it all out. Still so much doubt.

Is there a way out?

Or would it be better to just swallow all of this misery down?


	28. .:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·:.:·

My boy, I think of you when I look at the sad sky. My boy, you're beautiful, but you make me cry.

Hanging and struggling on this cross, this night in the blue.

…

I am looking as good as I ever have since my incarceration. Showered and dressed in my best clothes. I even got a haircut for the occasion.

I must impress. This is my one chance.

Two guards approach my cell. I stand up straight with my back to the door, my legs apart and my arms over my head.

"Assume the position," one orders.

They don't acknowledge that I have already obediently done just that, but I am too nervous to be offended. They grab me and prod me and cuff me and shackle me.

I do my best to be pleasant.

"The weather seems nice today," I say, looking out through the tiny window. "It's a nice day, don't you think?"

They ignore me and talk to each other, talk over me. They push and pull me out and down the hall and through unfamiliar corridors. Or perhaps I have been taken this way before at the very beginning of all this and just can't remember.

There are a lot of things I can't remember, but the events that landed me here in the first place, I remember all of that. Everything. They involved my Danny, after all, and I could never forget anything having to do with him.

Do you still want to know what happened?

Of course you do. You're clearly as sick as I am for reading this far.

…

This swollen face, these listless eyes. I roll my soul under murky skies.

Something stirs in my sleepless mind; his memory becomes a knife.

…

The committee room is nothing special. It's a conference room with one table in the center and comfortable office chairs surrounding it. A stenographer's desk is in one corner, and a sturdy metal chair is at the head of the table. I am of course led to this single metal chair and shackled to it. But I do not complain. I must remain pleasant.

I am made to wait for some time. I rehearse in my head everything I want to say, everything that I hope will get me what I want.

The committee members finally arrive. Two elderly women, one with white hair, one with grey hair. One middle-aged man with no hair at all. I focus on the man. He's the one I'll need to charm. My charms never work on women. Women are only ever jealous of me.

The committee members take their seats and notice me. They look at me for some time, whisper amongst themselves as the secretary sets out coffee and donuts before sitting at the stenographer's desk to type out every word, every breath, every clatter.

I study their eyes. I look for any glimpses of ghostly possession. But as far as I can tell, they are real. They are human. They are free.

For once, perhaps Vlad has decided to leave me alone in this.

If he knows what's good for him, he'll continue to stay away. If he forces me to stay here, I'll have no choice but to accept his offer to go away with him, and then I'll kill him. If I can kill a man I love, I can certainly kill a man I hate.

"Where should we start?" asks the white-haired woman as she sips her coffee.

"Let's just start with her." The grey-haired woman turns to me. "Madeline Fenton. Do you know why you're here?"

I maintain eye contact and nod.

"You've been held in this facility for four years. Is that correct?"

I nod again.

"But you don't like it here. You want to be transferred."

I say nothing.

"How have you been spending your time here?"

"I mostly just think, I suppose. And I exercise out in the yard when I can. And I write."

"You write?" The grey-haired woman looks through some notes. "You receive more mail than anyone else here, but you have not sent any letters out."

"I don't write letters. I write for myself." And then I suddenly wonder why I have been writing this account of what really happened. Is this really just for me? Will anyone else ever read this? Are you actually reading this?

"You also spend a lot of time in therapy," remarks the white-haired woman. "In fact, your therapist has suggested that you should be transferred."

"Yes. Apparently, this facility is no good for your health," says the grey-haired woman. "Have we really failed you so miserably?"

I stare at the only man in the room, but he remains quiet.

"You have been getting visits from only one person, but he visits you quite regularly," says the grey-haired woman. "Vlad Masters."

"The multi-billionaire?" questions the white-haired woman.

"Yes."

The two women exchange girlish smiles. Devious thoughts are likely running through their minds. Vlad has that effect on older women.

But not on me. I breathe deeply to keep my poise and all contents in my stomach.

"Your therapist believes you would do better in a new facility away from Vlad Masters and away from this environment. Do you not get along with the other women here?"

"I just feel sick here. All the time."

"But you do know why you're here in the first place, right? You do know what you did?"

I know exactly what I did.

"And you think you deserve to be somewhere that would make you feel more comfortable?"

"Please," I gasp out. "I just need to be away from Vlad. That's all. I don't care about comfort. I know what I did. I'm not denying any of it. I'm not saying I shouldn't be punished."

"Let's talk about what you did," the middle-aged man finally speaks.

All eyes turn to the secretary. She finishes typing and then lifts a sheet of paper. "Eidolon County case No. 59-475," she reads aloud.

I hold my breath.

"March 2014. Defendant, Madeline Fenton, called 'Maddie,' aged forty-eight, white female, married. No record of previous arrests. Personal file." The secretary begins listing details of my life, my date and place of birth, my parents, my childhood, my education.

"What does any of this matter?" I interrupt. I hate hearing about myself. "What does this have to do with me being transferred?"

I am shushed by the guards on either side of me. The secretary continues with what I studied in college, my unusual fascination with ghosts, especially at a time when they were not yet proven to exist. That was a big part of the prosecution's case, my obsession with ghosts. They have to talk about it. The committee turns to me for just a moment with disapproval. I look only at the secretary. She then discusses my previous employment, my marriage, my children. She takes great care to mention the name of my son. "Daniel Fenton."

"Danny," I say. "It's a mistake. He's not Daniel. Only Danny."

The secretary nods. "Daniel Fenton, called 'Danny.'"

I breathe with relief.

A few more background details, and then the real story begins. "Danny returned to Amity Park from Stonepoint to stay for the Christmas holiday season on December 12, 2011. On December 16, his girlfriend at the time, Samantha Manson, broke off a five-and-a-half-year relationship with him. His father, Jack Fenton, sister, Jasmine Fenton, and close friend, Tucker Foley, report that Danny exhibited extreme depression during this time. His father further states that Danny confined himself to his room beginning the night of December 31, 2011."

Yes, yes, so far, that is true.

"Defendant claimed to take Danny to the airport for his 1:55 flight out of Comity International Airport to Stonepoint on January 7, 2012. Airport records indicate that Danny never boarded that plane. His roommates at the time claim that they never saw him return from Amity Park. They had assumed he was still living in the house with them since his rent payments continued to be on time. However, upon inspection of his room, it looked as if he had not returned from his trip to Amity Park. As discovered later, the defendant had kidnapped Danny and kept him at a private secluded residence in Pearltown belonging to a family friend, Vlad Masters. Defendant kept Danny's location secret from his friends and her family including her husband. Defendant kept Danny at this location against his will from January 7, 2012 until March 29, 2014. During this time—"

"No," I shout. "That's not right. That's not what happened. He chose to stay there on his own."

A guard hisses at me to be silent.

"But it's wrong," I protest. "They have the story all wrong."

"During this time," the secretary continues, "Defendant conducted extensive experiments on Danny all pertaining to her research involving the paranormal, specifically ghosts."

Yes. I told you that already. But I only conducted those tests and experiments in the final year he was there, not the entire time. And he asked me to do that. Remember? I told you that. I already told you.

Over the final year of his life, he begged me to run more tests on him every time I came to visit. He was getting increasingly paranoid, suffering more and more panic attacks, and he always felt so much better when I assured him that he was fine and normal and stable.

"I just need to know for sure," said Danny. "I just want to know the moment my ghost side seems to be getting stronger."

I held back a smile. He had no idea just how thrilled his request made me as a scientist who had been aching to study his ghost side for so long. Or perhaps he did know exactly how much I wanted to run such tests on him. Either way, I wasn't about to tell him.

"Okay, Danny, but you have to eat something first. And you have to take a walk outside with me. I can run the tests afterwards."

A deal, a compromise. I wanted to do whatever I could to keep him healthy, wanted to try different things to keep his ghostly infection from getting any worse, the ghostly infection that I was keeping secret from him because I didn't want to panic him with the truth.

And so he started eating better. He started exercising and working out again with Vlad's home gym system. He actually started to look pretty good as his color and muscle mass returned.

But there was no denying that he was beginning to look more and more like the dark ghost I had seen in Clockwork's looking-glass all those years ago.

But I ignored it. Danny was starting to be physically healthy again, and that was necessary if he was going to be mentally and emotionally healthy again, too.

I had to hold up my end of the bargain, though. Danny did his part by keeping himself physically healthy, so I had to do my part by running the tests and analyzing his blood and ectoplasm and brain waves.

October of twenty-thirteen. He stayed in the lab this time as I analyzed his blood samples. The ghostly antibodies were multiplying at an alarming rate. I had been running various tests of my own to see how they could be targeted and reduced, but they were stronger than anything I could introduce to them.

"You haven't been transforming, right?" I asked him as I looked through the lens of the most powerful microscope Vlad had.

"No," said Danny nervously. "Why?"

"Just need to know for my notes." I had to wonder just how much more quickly this ghostly inflammation would spread if he were to transform. "Everything looks the same. You're fine."

I was lying, yes. His ghostly properties were swarming and increasing. But I had to keep his panic and pain under control, and if lying could do that, then I had to lie. I planned on telling him the truth later once I figured out how to cure him.

And I was determined to cure him. I thought that maybe I could even convince him to let me run more invasive tests. If he felt desperate enough, if I assured him it was necessary, I was confident he'd let me.

"Are you sure?" Danny asked anxiously.

I turned back to him. This was the first time he had questioned me. Usually, he just responded with relief.

"Check again. Please," he begged.

I studied his face, his arms. His inner elbows and triceps and even his hands were dotted and scarred with so many puncture points and petechiae and bruises.

"Yes, Danny. I'm sure." I turned around and looked at all of the samples and results again. The signs of a supernatural attack on his human cells were still so prominent. "Still sure."

He nodded in understanding, but he didn't look relieved at all. He seemed skeptical and doubtful.

The tests continued for some time. He missed the holidays again. I sent gifts and letters on his behalf, doing my best to write in his style. They seemed to fool Jack and Jazz, but they were still worried about him.

"When are we actually going to see Danny again?" asked Jazz.

"Something serious must be going on with Danny," said Jack. "This isn't right. Does he need help?"

I did my best to brush off their questions and to quash their worries. I had a new mission now, a mission to cure Danny's ghostly mutation that was spreading through him like cancer. I was determined to get him into remission. I was sure that would solve everything, that his mind would heal so he could return to the world.

I just had to keep testing and trying new ways to combat his infection.

And I had to do it without alarming him because such stress and pain and panic would only make the cancer progress faster, and I needed all the time I could get.

"Torture. She tortured him for over two years."

I am jolted. I do not know who said this. The grey-haired woman or the white-haired woman?

"Excuse me. Are you paying attention?" asks the white-haired woman.

I blink.

"We've been reviewing the events," says the middle-aged man to remind me.

"But why?" I ask. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"So that we can discuss options. So that we can decide if you really should be transferred," says the grey-haired woman.

"We're just not convinced you deserve it," says the white-haired woman.

"Maybe you just need medication. Or more security," offers the grey-haired woman.

"And how could any woman not want to see Vlad Masters?" sighs the white-haired woman.

"I hate him," I spit. "You have no idea what's he done to me, to Danny. He has you all fooled, overshadowed enough people to absolve himself of any blame."

"I'm afraid I don't understand you," says the white-haired woman. "You are making no sense. It makes no sense to hate Vlad Masters. How can anyone hate him?"

I seethe and fume and burn inside.

"Tell us about Danny," says the middle-aged man.

"Danny?"

"Your son."

"What do you want me to say about him?" I could talk for the rest of my life about him.

"What were your feelings toward him?"

"Pride. Fondness. Love."

"But you tortured him," says the grey-haired lady firmly, accusatorily. Her eyes bore into me. "For over two years. You kidnapped him and imprisoned him and tortured him."

I shake my head and glare at her hatefully. "I saved him."

The days and weeks and months carried on. In that time, I tried concocting a number of solutions and serums to battle his infection. And in the meantime, since he wasn't transforming anyway, I injected him with new strains of my solution that prevented ghostly molecular changes. I never told him because I didn't want him to be alarmed or to start asking questions, but it was easy to give him a quick shot when I was already poking and prodding him anyway.

My hope was that the serum would prevent his ghostly antibodies from multiplying at least while it was in his system. My original strain of the solution only lasted a few hours, so I set to work on trying to make it last longer, perhaps even as long as a week. Or at least a day. A daily injection was feasible if it could prevent this cancer from getting any worse.

But his spectral molecules were getting stronger and stronger. The strains I created would work one day, but then the antibodies would break it down the next.

"You're definitely not transforming at all, right?" I asked him.

"Not at all," assured Danny. "Why do you keep asking that?"

I smiled and dismissed it. But there was no mistake that his ghostly molecules were gaining strength and numbers at an exponentially increasing rate. Injections of the solution were only delaying its spread.

And all the while, Danny was becoming more paranoid and anxious and depressed. I did everything in my power to help him emotionally. Comedy movies and TV shows, uplifting books, spirited music, his favorite food. At night, we would stargaze if it wasn't too cold. I even bought a telescope for him, and we would look through it together. But all of the wonder I used to see in his eyes when he gazed at the constellations and distant planets was noticeably absent.

He leaned against the telescope one night with an expression of melancholy longing and desperation. "I wish I could've had a chance to explore out there more. But at least I got to go out there once."

He had apparently been out in the cosmos before on a ghost-related mission years ago in his adolescence. But he spoke in this moment as if it were all over for him, as if there would never be another opportunity for him to do anything that incredible ever again, as if his life were coming to an end.

And it was coming to an end. I didn't know it yet. But perhaps he did.

All I knew was that I had to fix him. I had to bring my son back somehow. I just wanted to see him smile again. I wanted to see him continue to grow and graduate from college and make his mark on the world.

I had to figure out what chemical mixture would cure him.

This puzzle consumed me. I worked on it whenever I had a chance, both at home in Amity Park and when I was visiting Danny. Jack would often ask what I was working on so feverishly in our home lab. I made up answers, lied to him over and over.

And I continued lying to Danny.

"It happened at the end of March, correct?" asks the grey-haired woman.

March's end. His end.

"Twenty-fourteen," says the white-haired woman.

"But it all started the beginning of January in twenty-twelve," says the middle-aged man.

"It probably started sooner than that. Surely she had been planning this for some time."

"She  _is_  a scientist. This was likely a carefully devised scheme."

"And when she was finished with him, she finally put him out of his misery."

"Poor boy. Considering what she did to him, I'm sure he kept hoping she'd kill him sooner."

The end of March.

I drove out to visit him that final weekend. Friday afternoon. Danny was waiting for me in the living room.

"Please test me now," he begged.

"Hang on, sweetie. Let me set these bags down." More food for the week, specific concoctions I had been working on that I wanted to try injecting into him. "And I want you to eat first. I'm going to make something for you right now."

"I'm really not hungry. I don't want to wait. I have to know."

I put a hand to his forehead. He looked quite pale and haggard. "You feeling okay?"

"It's just—it's kind of been a rough week. I would feel better if I could find out if it's just in my head, psychological."

He seemed out of breath and very disturbed. I directed him to one of the sofas in the living room. "Try to relax, okay? You'll feel better after you eat, and then we'll go down to the lab."

I tried to calm myself as I cooked for him. I had to be calm if I wanted him to be calm. But the unease I felt in that moment was strangling.

After dinner, we went down to the lab together. I carried out all the usual tests on his human side, injected him with a concentrated dose of a serum strain that I had determined would prevent his ghostly molecules from changing for at least half a day. I had stopped making him transform several months earlier because I didn't want his ghostly molecules to gain strength at an increased speed. I wanted to give myself as much time as possible to create a strain that would finally work.

The results I gathered were devastating but not surprising. His spectral cancer was still spreading. I recorded the new numbers, made new notes, laid out the notes I had been making at home.

"All right. I have everything I need. I'm going to work for a bit down here, so why don't you go upstairs and watch TV?" I pulled out the newest strains I had been working on, prepared to test them against these new blood samples.

"Am I okay?"

I turned to look back at him. He was whiter than usual.

"You sure there aren't any changes at all?" he asked weakly.

"Everything's fine," I said evenly. "I'm going to run a few more tests just to be sure, but I'll let you know if I find anything."

I should've held him. I should've hugged him close to me.

But instead, I watched him go upstairs.

I worked late into the night. No progress, no success. If anything, I was regressing. I called it a night when my eyes were simply too tired to focus properly. Danny had already gone to bed by the time I retired to my room. I should've said good night to him. I wish I had said good night. But I instead decided not to wake him because I feared that he would ask about what I had been doing in the lab all night, and I was too drowsy to come up with a suitable answer for him. I needed to sleep first so I could have clarity of mind to continue lying to him.

The next morning, I showered and dressed before going to Danny's room to wake him. In the past, I usually had to rouse him out of bed and get him going, and I didn't expect this morning to be any different.

But it was different.

Danny wasn't in his room. I looked around before finally going downstairs. Perhaps he was already up and had actually made himself breakfast this time. Or maybe he was just on the sofa in the living room.

But Danny was still nowhere to be found. Not in the living room, not in the kitchen, not in any of the other rooms. I called out his name, but there was no response.

And then I heard noise coming from the basement lab.

I was frozen for a moment. What was he doing down there?

Reclaiming my breath, I descended into the basement and found Danny looking through all of my notes and samples and solutions. His back was to me, but I could see that he was shivering.

"Danny?" I called out to him tentatively.

Danny slowly turned to me with a pained expression. "I knew it. I knew you were lying to me."

I started walking toward him, but Danny held up a hand to stop me.

"I knew there was no way everything was 'fine.' Not with the way I've been feeling."

"Danny—"

"Why have you been lying to me?"

"I didn't lie. You  _are_  going to be fine. I just need to—"

"I'm not fine now. That's what you're saying, right?"

I didn't reply.

Danny looked at my notes again. "What does all this mean? What's happening to me?"

I still had no words.

"It's taking over me, isn't it?" Danny looked down at his hands. "I can feel it. I've been feeling it so much lately. I've been feeling so weak and worse than I ever have, so many horrible feelings despite my attempts to banish all my feelings. And all I can think about is ridding myself of all of these feelings, all of these stupid human emotions." He choked on a gasp and clutched at a counter to steady himself. "I want it so bad. So bad. I don't want to feel any of this anymore." He leaned against the counter, putting most of his weight on his arms as his legs shook. "I'm too weak."

"You're not weak, Danny." I tried to be reassuring and firm, but my voice was breaking.

"Yes, I am. I've always been weak. I've always been so fearful and insecure. And I hated being that way. I hated being so overshadowed by others, Jazz, other guys in my class. I felt like I just wasn't good enough, and no matter how hard I tried, I still wasn't what my teachers or what even you and Dad wanted. And I wanted to be what you all wanted. I hated disappointing everyone." He paused. "But then I was zapped by that portal, and I got this new strength, supernatural strength that made me feel like I could finally be someone worthwhile." He drew in a shuddery breath. "But my inherent weakness never left me. Why do you think Phantom wanted to rip me out of him in that alternate timeline you saw? Because I'm weak. My human emotions make me weak and interfere with his ghostly obsession." His breathing quickened. "I'm holding him back. Phantom wants me gone. He convinced me to separate myself from him in that alternate timeline. He wants me to do it again."

I creased my brow as I stared at him. His words were manic, panicked, nigh nonsensical.

"And I've been trying to keep him back, but he's just so much stronger than me. And honestly, I want it just as bad as he does. Any way I can do it, I want to do it. Vlad's Ghost Gauntlets or your Ghost Catcher. I want this all to go away. I want this to stop." He put his hands in his hair in agitation. "I know I can't give in. I can't let my ghostly obsession take on its own form like that. But I want to so bad. I want to. He wants me to. It's just all I can think about."

"Why are you talking about him as if he's not you?" I demanded. "You don't have some demon living inside you, Danny. It's all you. You're in complete control."

"No. I'm losing control. I'm losing my—ah!" Danny growled and held his head with trembling hands. "It didn't use to be this way. In the beginning, I thought it was just me. I thought I was still the same person and that being half ghost didn't change anything about me. Well, I knew it changed me physically, but psychologically, I thought I was the same. But then I realized that no, I was definitely  _not_  the same psychologically, especially when I was transformed. And these past few years, it's just been getting worse and worse, and now there's this voice in my head that won't leave me alone, this voice that keeps telling me I have to leave, have to get out, that I don't belong here."

He started hyperventilating, his speech breathless and frenetic.

"He keeps telling me I was never supposed to be here, that I wasn't supposed to stay, that I should've died when I was shocked by that portal. And yes, I should've. But I didn't. I'm lucky I didn't. We're  _all_  lucky I didn't because if I had, this ghostly obsession would've had a full form from the very beginning. But because I survived, he only got half of a form, a form that is held back by my humanity. But he's finally stronger than me now. He's finally strong enough to take full ownership of this body."

Danny gasped and shut his eyes.

"And I just feel so bad all the time. I feel sick. I feel tired. Everything hurts. Everything aches. No matter how hard I try to distance myself, I can't get rid of this guilt and loneliness and despair. And it all hurts so much. I want it gone. He wants it gone." He cried out, vocalized his pain. "I just want this to  _stop_! I want this to end!"

He sobbed over the counter with heaving shoulders. My own tears were trapped in my eyes, my whole body struck with deadening shock. I had to force myself to breathe. I couldn't speak.

Oh, my God.

He was insane.

All I had been trying to do for him. All this time that I had given him to recover. All the therapy and testing. All the assurances and hope. All the patience and love.

All for nothing.

"Danny." I held up my hands in an attempt to calm him down. "It's okay." My voice was shaking, my tears were breaking free. "It's all going to be okay. I'll figure something out. I'll find a hospital. I'll do some research and find a good one, okay?"

"A hospital?" Danny turned from the counter to look at me. "You think I need to be hospitalized? Like institutionalized?"

I was crying, but I managed to nod. "Yes. I do."

His eyes widened as he leaned back in stunned silence.

"It's been two years. We've been trying it your way for over two years now." I gestured to our surroundings. "This isn't working. You need more help than this, more help than what I can give you."

"And just what do you think being hospitalized could do for me? What do you think they could possibly do to help me? To prevent me from becoming  _him_? To keep me from getting out and hurting people? I could just phase out at any time."

"Ghost restraints. Ghost shield," I gasped out as I tried to think. "I could—they could borrow some of our—I could make it work. I promise I could find a way to keep you there so you can get professional treatment."

"Ghost restraints?" Danny scoffed. "Oh, yes, great idea. Keep me locked up, put me in even more pain and misery. That'll help. That'll stop Phantom who's unstoppably obsessed with eliminating his pain."

His volume rose as he spat this at me. I was helplessly at a loss for words.

"There's only one way to stop him," he said at a volume that was suddenly much lower, a pitch that was calmer. "And I can't do it myself. I've tried. I've been trying for weeks now, especially this last week. But Phantom won't let me do it."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, but I was afraid to know.

Danny left the lab. I waited for him, sensing that was what he wanted me to do. When he at last returned, I backed away from what I saw in his hands.

"Could we see the photographs?" the middle-aged man asks.

"I'm not sure I want to see them," the white-haired woman says.

"They document the event."

"So explicitly."

"We must review everything," the grey-haired woman says. "Let's have the photographs."

The secretary holds out a large envelope. "There are two sets."

"The three of us can share one. She can look at the other." The middle-aged man nods in my direction. The secretary hands one of the guards a pile of glossy eight by tens. The guard holds a photo in front of me.

"This is Danny," says the middle-aged man.

I turn away.

"Where did you get that?" I shrieked.

Danny turned over the silver revolver in his hands as he looked down at it. "It's Vlad's. It was in one of his safes."

"That's a real gun." Numb. Cold. Disbelieving. "That's not an ecto-gun. How did you get into his safe?"

"It's not like it had a ghost shield surrounding it," said Danny nonchalantly as he continued to study the gun.

My fear was rising. I had already concluded that he was unsound, unhinged, and now with a gun in his hands, I had no idea what he would do next. "That's—it's not loaded, is it?"

Danny pushed open the cylinder so that I could see the six bullets fully seated inside.

"Why, Danny?"

"Because the only way to stop Phantom is to kill him. And once he's taken over me, he'll be almost impossible to kill, too powerful. So he needs to be killed before he completely possesses me. And the only way to kill him right now is to kill me."

He raised the gun to his head and cocked it. I screamed and cried and begged. Danny, don't, please, I can help you. You can get help. Don't do this. Please put the gun down.

His hand started spasming. He yelled in frustration and finally lowered the gun, slamming it down on the nearest counter. He panted and leaned over the counter, the gun still clutched in his hand. "I can't. I can't do it. I want to. God, I want to. So bad. But I can't. He won't let me."

I put a hand to my chest as I tried to restart my heart.

"I've been trying to. But then my ghostly obsession kicks in. It's strongest when I'm transformed, but I sometimes feel it when I'm in this form, and when I'm faced with mortal danger, it's impossible to resist."

He turned back to me, the gun once again in his hands.

"I can't kill myself. Phantom won't let me."

He walked toward me, held the gun out to me.

"Please help me," he begged in a whisper.

"This is Danny," the middle-aged man says.

Eight by ten. The photographs are shown to me as if they're proof.

I saved him. I hope you can understand that. He was beyond repair.

"This is Danny," the middle-aged man says. "Can we have your attention? Can I ask you to take a look?"

"I know what he looks like," I say.

"What he looked like."

I look. Photographs.

"Please help me," he begged me. "If you do it, I won't try to hurt you. The guilt I'd feel for hurting you would be far greater. And look." He punched a counter as hard as he could, his knuckles breaking and bleeding.

"Danny," I gasped, but I couldn't move.

"See?" He grimaced as he held his bleeding hand. "I normally would've been compelled to turn intangible, but I can't turn intangible right now. I can't transform or do anything. I read it in your notes. You've been injecting me with that solution that prevents my ghostly molecules from changing, right? And you injected me last night. It's still working. This is the perfect time. Before it wears off. This is the only time. It's the only way to combat my ghostly obsession. Please do this for me."

"Do what?" I asked tearfully, feigning ignorance, anything to stall.

He took my hands and pressed the revolver into them. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.

I stared down at the revolver. Silver, sparkling, stunning. Of course Vlad would buy only the most beautiful gun.

I held the gun firmly and raised my eyes. Danny stood apart from me with pained anticipation.

"I can help you," I murmured. "I can find help for you."

"This is how you can help me, Mom."

"No. I'm not doing this."

"You have to. I can't do it. I literally, physically can't."

"And what makes you think I can?"

"You're the only one who can."

I was sweating. I could feel the moisture running down my neck. "Danny, please, you're human now. You said you can reason when you're not in ghost form. Reason through this, Danny."

"But how long until I can't reason anymore?" His breaths were erratic, his voice was rough. "When I get to that point, what then? It will be too late."

His dark persona would never feel guilt or shame, would never care to reason through anything so long as he wasn't in pain.

Danny held out his shaking hands to me, a gesture of surrender, awaiting arrest. "I don't want to get to that point. You have to stop me now."

I didn't want him to get to that point either. I wanted to rescue him, fix him, cure him.

"End my pain." Danny was crying. "I can't take it anymore."

"This is Danny." The guard holds a photograph in front of my eyes.

"I can't do it. I can't do it. I won't do it."

"You don't have to shoot me. You can do it another way."

Another way? What did he mean? Something awful, something terrible.

"Like I said, I can't transform or use any of my ghost powers. You could strap me down and cut me open. You just have to make sure I don't survive it."

I lost my balance and stumbled back into the counter. The loaded gun was still in my hands.

"This table here." Danny walked over to the observation table nearby. "Would that be better? Would that be easier? Could you do it that way?"

"No!" I somehow found my voice, shrieky and disbelieving.

"But you want to, don't you?"

I just wanted this to be over. I wanted this to end.

"I know you want to." He glared, scowled. "Admit it. You want to see exactly what I am."

He was the perfect specimen. The one ghost I wanted under my knife more than any other and yet could never have.

I shook my head.

"Liar."

"This is Danny." A photograph.

"How could she do such a thing?"

"Vile. Evil."

"This is Danny," they say, and another photograph is in front of me.

The end of Danny.

He clutched the sides of the observation table and hyperventilated as he leaned over it.

"Where are you?" he whispered.

His eyes were looking down, then up. I followed his gaze, but I had no idea what he was trying to see.

"I'm afraid. I don't know what else there is besides this. But I know I can't go on like this anymore. And I know I can't inflict myself on the world."

His eyes fell on me, but they were unfocused.

"I'm going to die no matter what. Either my ghost side will completely overtake me or something will kill me that also kills my ghost side. One way results in my ghost obsession taking its own form and terrorizing the world. The other way results in my complete disappearance, but at least the world will be spared."

"This is Danny," the middle-aged man says again and again, and each time, the guard shows me another photograph.

"Tell us what you see," says the white-haired woman.

The constellations we used to gaze at together. Dark sky like his hair. Gleaming stars like his eyes.

"Look again. What do you see?" the grey-haired woman asks.

I slowly shake my head. I refuse to see what they want me to see. What they want me to see is not really there. I saved them all. I saved him. I saved you.

"All I wanted to do was use my powers to fix the mess I made, to stop all the ghosts I had unleashed on our town. And now I have one final ghost to stop. Except he's the one ghost I can't stop on my own." His eyes focused on me. "You have to stop him."

"This is Danny," they say.

I nod. I know Danny. I know all about Danny.

"The end of Danny."

He let go of the observation table and stumbled over to a drawer of various utensils and instruments. He pulled out a knife and held it up, held it out, held it toward me.

"Would this be better? Could you do it with this?"

"I can't do it with anything, Danny."

The gun was still in my hands.

"Either shoot me or cut me," he begged. "Whatever is easiest. But you have to do it. You have to do something. You have to decide. You have to choose. You have to act. You have to help me. You have to help everyone."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"You couldn't possibly hurt me anymore than I'm hurting now."

He staggered toward me, the knife held out to me, directed at me, pointed at me.

A clean trajectory, upwards, instant and yet so slow. I remember the direction he fell in, the unnatural position he landed in. Blood from the wound gushed and dripped and filled his open blue eye.

I didn't understand. I had to understand. I held him to me, kissed him, dove into him, plunged into him. Over and over. Again and again.

He was on the table and on the floor and on the counters and on the walls and under my fingernails. Everywhere and nowhere. All over and gone. Spread out. Winked out.

I climbed the stairs. Blood that had not yet dried stained the rail, blood that had caked on my hands scraped off in flakes. Outside, I stared out at the newly blossomed trees in the chilled spring air. I lowered myself, sat on the porch steps.

Minutes passed. Hours.

Vlad's car drove up, parked. I didn't move. He came out of his car and approached me, stared down at me. I still didn't move.

"What did you do?"

I started his life. I was the only one who had any right to end it.

"Maddie. What did you do?"

He entered the house, left the front door open. He howled and cursed.

He leaned over me, grabbed my shoulders, screamed at me. Maddie. Maddie. What did you do? Why did you do this? You've gone too far. What have you done? I can't help you with this. Do you hear me? I can't cover this up for you. I can't hide you from this. This is too much. I could never overshadow enough people. This can't be concealed. This can't be explained. Look at me. Maddie, do you understand me? You weren't supposed to do this, Maddie!

I scream back at him, damn him, cry out and sob. The committee members are startled.

"Are you all right?" asks the white-haired woman.

He's not all right. He wasn't all right. He'll be never be all right again. There was no way for him to be all right ever again.

"Let's get on with it," says the middle-aged man, looking at me carefully, tiredly. "We've spent too much time on this already."

"Go on, then," says the grey-haired woman. "Quick, read the rest."

The secretary reads aloud: March 29, 2014, Pearltown, less than a week before his twenty-fourth birthday, Danny Fenton is found dead in a basement lab in a secluded residence. Cause of death: gunshot wound to the head, entering from the left side of forehead and exiting from the back right side of head. Weapon recovered at scene, .44 Magnum revolver, unregistered. Coroner positively identified .44 caliber bullet found at scene as matching the parameters of wound in victim's head. Fingerprints on weapon match accused and victim. Fingerprints on bullet found at scene and bullets in the revolver's cylinder match victim's suggesting that he loaded the gun. Surgical instruments recovered at scene covered in blood identified as victim's. Fingerprints on surgical instruments match accused. Victim found supine on table with multiple incisions and chop wounds occurring after death. Victim's neck, torso, arms, and legs torn open and exposed. Fragments of skin, muscle, organ tissue, and bones scattered on table, countertops, and floor identified by lab as belonging to victim. Bloody fingerprints on victim's body and lip prints on victim's face and neck match accused. Accused apparently surgically operated on and dissected victim after his death. Victim's blood found on accused's clothing, hair, hands, fingernails, face, ears. Large amounts of substances identified as spectral ectoplasm, antigens, and other ghostly foreign bodies found in victim's blood. Accused, the victim's mother and a renowned paranormal researcher with a focus on ghosts, suspected to have subjected victim to experimentation related to her research for the two years and three months he was held in captivity and possibly even years before beginning in his early adolescence. Accused showed no signs of injury or struggle. Photographs and samples taken. End note: Accused was at the scene when police arrived and was completely silent and acquiescent at time of her arrest.

The end at last. It's finished. That is all that happened. His darkness is gone. That Thermos in Clockwork's lair is empty now.

I did what I had to do. Then I did what I wanted to do.

I have told only you.

They are done with me. I'm taken out and carried away. I am given what I deserve, the sentence I earned, the damnation I won.

He's waiting for me out there. Up there. Somewhere. I know the first thing I'll say to him.

This wasn't what I thought would happen. I'm sorry I couldn't go first. But I'm here for you now. I'll never leave you again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well? Do you believe Maddie's story here? Or do you think she locked Danny away for experimentation that eventually killed him?


End file.
